


Nuclear (ABANDONED)

by amieangie



Category: Naruto
Genre: Bisexuality, Canon Compliant, Canon Rewrite, Canon-Typical Violence, Character Development, Developing Relationship, Edo Tensei, F/F, F/M, Fix-It of Sorts, Freeform, Good Writing, Growing Up, Homosexuality, M/M, Moving On, Non-Linear Narrative, Not Beta Read, Not Really Character Death, Plot Twists, Post-War, Some Humor, Strong Female Characters, Suspense, Temporary Character Death, War
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-12-31
Updated: 2020-04-01
Packaged: 2021-02-26 10:08:26
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 37,589
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22482997
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/amieangie/pseuds/amieangie
Summary: REWRITTENWe fight believing in our own justice, but if the enemy is doing the same, who's right? We're ready to die since the day we swore over it to The Leaf, so that's no surprise. What are we fighting for?"I don't know, Naruto. I guess none of us ever knew." Minato said. "But if we're to die, we're to die kicking and screaming just as we came to the world."Naruto smiled at his father, eyes as blue as the sky, before it was filled with smoke. They rose to their feet, ready to fight."Just like the old times." Kakashi smiled beneath his mask and vanished as fast as lightning.In which:
'Cause he wasn't moved just on revenged, Sasuke disappeared; Naruto stayed; Sakura's never been feeble, not even in her youth 'cause she wasn't moved just on Sasuke; and Kakashi is not what you take him for; nothing is.
The War isn't over - neither is Madara.(once it's non-linear, I updated with the years of each scene to help :) )(wash your hands and give me kudos)
Relationships: Haruno Sakura/Hatake Kakashi
Comments: 15
Kudos: 40





	1. PROLOGUE

**Author's Note:**

> Everything you know about them, you don't. Something you do, something are blurry, some are crystal clear. Not sure when or how we're going to find out - just know this is going to be a hell of a non-linear trip changing and keeping the past, the present and fuck most part of the future. But then will be linear events, just with some jumps here and there.  
Just sitck around. I have a great part of it wrote already and, well, it is good, 'k? It will all make sense. It will be worthy it. I promise.  
And I keep my promises. (it's my nindo, I'd say)  
Just read it. It's important and we are in quarantine and shit.

_May 3012, 3 years after the beginning of the 4th Great Ninja War _

* * *

> the horrifying truth of the human nature 

What is “**nature**” of a **person**? Human **nature** is a bundle of characteristics, including the way of thinking, feeling, acting, which they are said to have naturally, since birth. It refers mostly to the everyday habits we have and the way we behave with people, that don't change untill _we want to. _

The **dark side** of our **nature** is our mysterious and fragile underbelly — our negative, but all too **human**, **side**. For many of us, it may be easier to simply _avoid looking into the darker aspe_cts of ourselves and our world — the suffering we see everywhere around us, from real world events to the entertainment we consume.

* * *

WHEN THE WAR KEEPS roaring do you dare to live or do you content on surviving? When it all began, it was a fight for justice and peace. By now, is there anything that is remotely taken as justice? We fight believing in our own justice. But if the enemy is doing the same, who's right? Who's wrong?

Are there any sides left for us to take, to be grounded, to place our feet upon? Because only the dead have seen the end of war. They're ready to die since the day they swore over it when they tied themselves to serving their village, so that's no surprise. But we're all mislead to believe in our own pain, our only and pure pain and sorrow.

But aren't we all human?

What are we fighting for? 

* * *

"I don't know, Naruto. I guess none of us ever knew." Minato said, leaning in the big rock they were sitting, Kakashi at his right side, sending smoke to the sky. "But if we're to die, we're to die kicking and screaming, bathed in blood and tears, just as we came to the world."

Naruto tried to smile as his father messed his hair, that was longer now, tied in a low ponytail at the back of his neck. It wasn't per choice initially to let It grow. Where they went he didn't had the benefit of scissors and it was dark to try it with a kunai without putting your neck at line so he gave up. He liked it now. Even with the dark circles beneath, his eyes were as blue as the sky above, just like his father's, before it was filled with smoke. From that far they couldn’t hear any screams, but the smoke was so dense they recognized whom was probably behind it.

Birds flew in their direction, coming from West. 

“They arrived earlier than we expected.” Kakashi said, looking at the sky, probably measuring the time by the position of the sun in it. “Fuckers.”

They rose to their feet, ready to fight. Naruto cracked his knuckles. 

Kakashi stepped on his cigarette. It left a black trait.

"Just like the old times." he smiled beneath his mask and vanished as fast as lightning, only a swirl of leaves behind.

Minato shot a smile at his direction that made Naruto want to ask, for the thousandth time, what memory was that it evoked. Kakashi and Minato always had their own jokes - they had it with Obito before he died, too. Naruto didn’t feel out of place or jealous, he just wanted to be part of the family before he lost them.

Earlier that day, when Kakashi was taking a piss, talking to his summons, catching a apple, jerking off, whatever; when his father decided he was far enough not to hear them, he told Naruto that it was in that very rock he told Obito about Sakumo Hatake, Kakashi's father and why he was so restrict and snob.

_ (Naruto couldn't picture Kakashi being that way. Rude, arrogant, cold and not even twitching his eyes in another's direction, not caring if someone fell lump at his side. His eyes focused on the blood he was about to gather is his screaming loudly hand, counting the enemies one by one, as a prisoner counts the day that passes. That just proved that Naruto knew nothing at all. Minato would never tell him otherwise) _

It was in that rock they were sitting the whole afternoon, setting traps in a 10 km range, positioning mesh, noose, decoy, genjutsu, illusions, snares, pitfalls, scuttle, watchman, trackers, alarms, signals, everything, that Obito learnt that Kakashi was nothing but the product of a disgrace.

"Naruto?" a sweet voice called from a branch over his head and when he turned around, he saw Hinata, a deep cut in her cheek. She smiled at him, her arm covered in bandages, leaves in her hair and some parts of it were plastered with blood. Nothing new for none of them. “Sakura told you to come North and Lord Forth," she bowed in homage" please, if you may, head East.”

“You can call me justificar Minato, Lady Hinata.”

She gave him a shy smile, but didn’t blush like she would’ve two years ago. “I can try to work on that.” 

Minato shot them both his big, warm smile and was gone in a flash of yellow.

“What about you, Hinata? Coming with me?” she shook her head, simply basking for something at her belt. 

“This.” she put a scroll in his hand. “Lady Tsunade sent this. And a knuckle in your head, but I am tired.”

He beamed and scratched the back of his neck, the way he did when was nervous about something - a quirk he inherited from both Kakashi and his father.

"Well, won't lie and say I'm not happy about it, but I really hope you're not chakra depleted tired." he said, eyes wild, always afraid of saying something wrong. "Just, you know, tired."

Hinata laughed a bit. "You really don't change, do you, Naruto?"

He couldn’t help but think how _ wrong _ she was. 

He thought about Sakura. About how people used to think about her, how people saw her - the giggles and Sasuke, like she had nothing better to think or to do. How Sakura had her knees, thighs, forearms, hands and face splattered with blood and the shake of her hands. How she tried to whip her forehead with her arm and how the blood just spread instead of cleaning. Even Sasuke looked at her that day - _ saw _ her that day. 

He thought about the bridge and how much the bridge changed everything. How much Tazuna, Zabuza, Haku and Gato changed everything. The team of cute genin, blind to the hatred and bloodthirsty of the world they were and how one day flipped they world. 

Sasuke and Naruto were too busy fighting Haku and Kakashi was too busy fighting Zabuza, but they all saw when Sakura ripped the throat of that man. And the other man. They saw the tears streaming down her face, but the gleam of her green eyes looked more like a warning than an inviting. 

_ (Naruto always saw Sakura smile like a small star collision, impossible to tear your eyes away and beautiful in all its charm, the strongest weapon of her arsenal, until that day when he saw that her will to live screamed like a child ripped from its mother’s arms - he knew the sound way too well ‘cause he had to do it more often than he liked to admit.) _

All the blood they shed after the bridge was their downfall. 

Everyone still saw them from what they _ tried _ to be: children. Sakura tried, Naruto tried, hell, even Sasuke tried. They laughed and fighted and bickered and Kakashi rolled his eyes and they painted fences and rescued cats and _ assassinated_. There were days they felt worse than ANBU and days they felt like what they were: fucking children. 

With the burden of blood in their shoulders they finally understood how Itachi and Obito did what they did at such young age - they were doing the same.

And Hinata, like that, crouched in a branch, ignorant of their past, her clothes torn, her hair fucked up, some scars now for play, she looked much more like the Princess of the Byakugan then she looked when she was calm and collected.

Naruto wished he could say that to her, but he couldn't find the words.

So he just smiled at her the best of his smiled, the one that always screamed _ Naruto _ and could brighten the day.

The ground shake beneath their feet and, with a last smile, Hinata sunshined away in a swirl of lilac.

Naruto, too, looked different. (His exterior) The War was wavering its toll on him. He didn't use orange clothes most of the time now. Orange clothes were too much Naruto and Naruto was too much of a target - even though, they all were too much of a target lately.

He learnt to control his temper and to turn Kurama's mode into something that didn't resemble neon, because neon doesn't serve well in battlefields.

His eyes were brighter now because his skin was darker from standing so much in the sun and not always in the Leaf - they spend a shockingly amount of time at the Sand and the weather there was a bitch.

The curtain of smoke was growing thinner so he jumped from the rock. He liked that rock. Too bad it would be nothing but crumbs in the matter of minutes.

When Naruto read the scroll he couldn’t help but smile. 

With one last look he took the view in. It all looked peaceful. It was a shame the last thing he thought around before disappearing in the same lighting speed as his father was that a beautiful moment happened here.

He could hear the screams them. And see the gigantic blue and purple figures rise to fight each other - Susanoo'os. (Sasuke’s and Madara’s) It was about time, already. Naruto felt Kurama moving inside him and a smile formed in his lips - a smile only war can forge, rough around the edges where it can strike and rip your skin in the places that hurt the most. 

"Naruto?" Kurama asked inside his mind "Do you miss him?"

The smile flattered, but not entirely. He was no longer that boy and for a long time now. 

"You can miss something and not want it back, Kurama."

So it all fell in muteness - _ destroy what destroys you. _

(Bukowski was wrong. Don't just _ find what you love and let it destroy you. _ When you least expect your thoughts are killing you and there's no escape from within, you cannot run from yourself. Hilda Haist was right. “Where do the trains go, father?” “For Mahal, Tamí, for Camirí, spaces on the map, and then the father laughed: also nowhere, my son, thou can go and even if the train moves, thou doesn’t move from thyself”. You're trapped and this is both beautiful and terrifying. We're only layers of skin hiding bones and those are too fragile. 

Kakashi sat with him by the fire three nights ago; his father was running the perimeter along Shikamaru and he was with Sakura and a bottle of something strong. 

"I wish I could tell you time heals all wounds," he began, taking a last sip before passing it to him "but we both know the more time you have, the long the list grows."

It was about time to put an end to it, whatever it means.)

No more beautiful moments to happen there.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Dude, that shit is very important to me, and it seems that like not one person in the whole Earth likes it and I just feel like someone punched me in the gut and then decided to make me revive my nightmare of being left alone and hated by everybody for not being good enough.  
I decided to write this to get rid of some angst I had and as I wrote I found so much good works that it influenced so much the direction of the history that I am very fucking proud of it and very fucking sad that very fucking no one CARES. "oh, you should write to yourself, yo make yourself happy and proud." yeah, try to write 100 pages and realise that no one likes that shit you fucking loved writing and you thought it could go somewhere, anywhere.  
In my opinion, the way that the war was portrayed was very bleh, so I decided to change that. And change younger Sakura. And younger Kakashi. and ANBU kakashi. ANBU Itachi. The second, the third war. The Third Hokage. Younger Naruto, younger Sasuke. Younger/older Ino, older (15/16) Hinata, Madara, Akatsuki, how Akatsuki worked, how it was formed, how Hokages and council works. Well, I changed a lot of stuff, but held onto the good shit because yeah that's what I do and I sound very cocky but it IS good, but tell me if someone is going to read it? Yeah, yeah. Probably there is only like three people reading this shit and then calling security like "that girl just lost it". It's the quarantine, man. That shit is scaring.  
So, yeah, I am going to deal with certain topics like drug abuse, drug addiction, alcoholism, suicide, depression, PTSD, grief, rape, etc, but I am not doing it for the spotlights, as I've seen a lot of people doing. I've been there, done that. When I talk about grief it is because I HAVE mourned and it almost got me killed. Same with drugs and alcohol. Mental disorders, suicide, rape, it's not something to put into a fanfiction just to label it as "dark" and use all the signs. No, just no. This isn't a regular dark fic. Don't come with that shit. If you want dark themes, you have it. If you get off on it, well, you have it. But it is not here for show. It is not graphic descriptions for entertainment.  
Well, I said a lot.  
Stay at home, okay? This too shall pass.


	2. How to Disappear Completely (CID 10 G90)

_November 3011, 2 years after the begging of the 4th Great Ninja War_

* * *

"I THOUGHT YOU WERE dead." 

"Well, didn't every one?" 

"You were supposed to be dead." 

"Well, didn't every one too?" 

"What?" 

"What?" 

"What does this mean?" 

"What?" 

"The “everyone should be dead” part." 

"Oh." 

"Oh?" he asked with his brows raised, his face twisted with annoyance. 

"I heard we were kind of extinct." 

"You sure as fuck were. Then” he stopped himself just as he as about to say “Madara” and tilted his head to the side, searching for something in the man - something he didn’t find. So he continued as if he never stopped. “Madara came out of nowhere, then Obito climbed through the gutter, then even fucking Itachi appears to me-" 

"Itachi appeared to you?" 

"Then _ you - _" he was cutted mid sentence. 

"What do you mean by Itachi appeared to you?" 

"Really?” his voice was the perfect mix between annoyance, disbelieve and total blankness - the latter winning as all good interrogator has to. “That's the part that caught your attention?" 

"Kinda." 

"Fuck you." he said pointedly, stating with the same emotion he uses to go _ please, excuse me, thank you _ at the market. He then exhaled, shaking his head, lighting the cigarette in one fluid motion. 

Recovering from showing one speckle of emotion, his fist covered in energy met the man’s jaw straight, making two teeth fly out. With a loud sigh that could be mistaken by a course, a weak green chakra checked him and let him at a situation stable enough to continue the interrogatory.

“Shit fuck, that hurt.” the man said and spit blood to the side.

“That’s what you get when you try to fuck around.”

“I wasn’t!”

“I am the one that does the questioning!” the voice reverberated through the walls with the same strength his lightening used to do. He was made of electricity. The man in the chair didn’t budge. 

“I just wanted - you know me -”

“No, I don’t.”

“Come on, for the old times.” 

Two teeth missing didn’t stopped the man from shooting a blinding smile that didn’t carry all the brightness that Gai’s had, but it had some shepiness glee that makes your lips quirk up immediately. 

“Give me something. _ Now._” The sound of chirping birds began to tweet in the room. A exasperated gasp was heard in front of the man and his smile fell.

“You’re not going to Chidori me.” his voice was way too cracky and desperate to be non chalant. Chidori was well known. Only the sound of the birds fighting to be the one chirping the loudest answered him. “Are you?” Louder. “Ta-”

“Don’t.” his voice was as dead as all those who met the end of the ball of electricity in his hand. “Don’t call me that. Tell me what do you know. Now. This is the last chance.”

“He wouldn’t like if you did that.”

The man didn’t even finish the sentence before Kakashi was over him. He flew straight to the ceiling due the way he aimed and his chair broke leaving his body to fall lump on the floor, just one of his ankles still tied and his left arm with the chains, but the wooden arm of the chair gone. 

“What the fuck, Hatake? I thought you were going to Chidori him!”

“You thought I would murder a fucking man that surrounded himself peacefully offering intel and information without asking nothing in exchange?” 

He had only one eyebrow raised and gave just an eye corned glare. He smiled reassuring anyway. “We will get there.” 

He turned his eyes to his forever present book. Except that the book that was open in his hand had none of the letters of Jiraya’s, but the infos they gathered the last months. As he had an infinite collection and very were the same copy, not even the special edition or anything like that, he sacrificed the books, turning them into endless pages of data, scoop they could obtain. 

Since Madara flet the battlefield over an year ago, they had to deal with was left: nothing. 

Their only connection to Madara was Obito and he was now dead. Kabuto and Orochimaru were out of the picture as well, so the Allied Forces dig the whole Great Nations over anything useful. They dug up out ghosts, ditched out rivalries, scooped every single inch of everything. All scrolls they could lay hands onto, all bandits they could snitch, all underground labs, hide outs, _ every fucking thing_. Still, they always came back empty handed. They had dozens of undercover missions ungoing, but what were they really undercovering in? The allies? Once they were all in the same boat, that seemed to make everything harder. 

Working together was faster. It wasn’t easy, though. The tension between the nations was building up again. Day in, day out they found rogue ninjas attacking each other’s lands. One year may not seem longer, but into a world used to be with a kunai at its embrace into the sleep, every feather seems a threat. One year ago, the only threat was Madara and all the puppets; now he was out of the picture and everyday he was looking more and more like a faded nightmare, so it was easy to see enemies in the ones that were right in front of you. 

The distrust was rising, mostly, because of the random attacks - that always seemed to leave a mark behind that sounded too close to comfort like the signature of another one of the nations. They kages had been in touch with each other almost every week to make sure the peace would remain.

Everyday the attacks didn't seem to be so random anymore nor reckless. They seemed to have purpose, to have targets. To have _knowledge_ \- of them, of what they did, how they fought, whom they were. It was sound way too much like a _déjà vu_ for anyone to be at ease.

Nothing happened yet, but everyone felt in the air it could happen at any minute. 

And Sasuke disappeared so timed in perfection with Madara that even the man himself might’ve have been suspicion. The Five Nations were beyond suspicion about Sasuke for ages now; they wanted to feast on Sasuke like wild beasts. They were fucking wrathful - if they wanted Sasuke’s head before, now they wanted it toasted and shappened into little flamingos. 

The Uchiha should be extinct. 

A groan made Kakashi take his eyes out of his annotations and the sound of two bottles put down on a table, a pair of eyes turning its attention to the man on the floor..

“Mornin’.” he said with his forever eye crease. A snort was heard. 

“That really hurt. I thought you were going to kill me.”

“I don’t kill and tell.”

Despite the blood coming from his nose and mouth he laughed and if his arm wasn’t broken and hurting so much he could’ve even point at him and say “I saw what you did there”. But it was hard to breath. 

Kakashi was leaning onto one chair in the fair middle of the room and brought it to the middle, sitting the man in it while the green chakra made sure he wasn’t to die. Relieving the pain, however, wasn’t part of the deal (yet).

"Yeah, he appeared to me." Kakashi said out of nowhere while the man was finishing being tied to the chair. 

_ (The healer was making ridiculous purposeful amount of strength to tie the man to the chair when Kakashi said that. At his words, a gap, a crack into his armor, the shock was so that by turning the head so fast a twirl of hair hit the man square in his face and the locks became heavy with the amount of blood. It was completely washed in blood in the mere seconds it nested in his face. Some people would add some relief of pain, would be shaken in the face of the raw nature of interrogation. But in that room, there were not innocents. They all had seen their amount of interrogations and seen their amount of collateral damage when they don’t cooperate. The healer didn’t took pity - his arm was pressed harder and his eyebrow bled more.) _

"When I died." Kakashi was looking at his book, his finger running over some words - for once, he was actually reading. 

"What?" the man still had the vocal chords to sound _ loud_.

Kakashi just kept examining the dossier, making a mental note here and there. 

"Really, I mean it." the prisoner was suddenly very serious. 

("_Oh, that you want to talk about?_" A third voice raised, the anger in those words poisonous enough to melt the floor. That was sushed with the wave of a hand. Kakashi didn’t miss the way those eyes widened at him and how he wasn’t yelled at because the mouth was too busy gaping. The man didn't see it.) 

"You died too?" 

Kakashi said nothing, and the room was filled with nothing but the angry breathing and the blood trickling in the floor. 

One step was taken in the direction of the man, a fist closed, knuckles already smudged. He wasn't in that beat up condition for nothing. _Shit, no _ Kakashi whispered so low it was a doubt someone besides him heard. 

"How?" he asked in a zippy tone.

The man seemed eager to know, like a puppy waving its tail when his owner comes home. (_"I am going to rip his head"_ Kakashi made another shush hand and "_I am going to rip your head—" _

He hissed under his breath. _ Calm down _ he said, it seemed. _ The fuck I will_, something akin was said. The man laughed. He was signing his death sentence and didn't even know.) 

Kakashi decided it was for the best just to say it already.

"Yes, I did. I died."

The confession didn't seem to ease his eagerness. 

"I got it, but how?" 

"Why do you care?" 

"Why not?" 

"You haven't spoke shit since you've come here. Why should I say something?" 

"Dunno." he just shrugged. 

His nose was broken and his voice was a bit nasal, some blood dripping down his chin. His left eye was a deep purple with black on the corners and two of his fingers were broken. He was fighting against the pain, breathing hardly, but was still humorous. It was amusing to watch.

Kakashi got fucking tired of it. 

Before another threat came from over his shoulder he punched the man. And again. And again. He punched him about nineteen times before he passes out. The main focus were his nose, his chin, his stomach and a prod just for good on the crotch. 

A whistle followed by a “Oh my” and Kakashi thought it was Anko in the room. “Didn’t know you had it in you, Hatake.”

“You sound like Anko.” that seemed to be an insult good enough for him to be left alone.

He went to check in his book and they stayed in silence. He was trying to see if he missed somehow, somewhere how that man was alive, how they would have overseen something like that, something that big.

When his eyes were losing focus over the letters on his book, he looked over the man splattered on the floor, the strong green chakra into his chest, he decided it was time enough of a interrogator-break - if such a thing existed. He just didn't want to do _this_.

“How is he?” this time he was hand shushed and he fought the urge to roll his eyes. After a few seconds he felt his patience wearing thin. “Are we really -” 

The hand came up again to shush him. 

“Don't be a child there, Hatake. Be quiet.” he lighted a cigarette. “Oh, and light one for me too.” 

With one cigarette in his hand and the other in his mouth, the woman came to sit by his side at a table. 

“Why did you shush me?”

“His chakra paths.” she took a deep drag and went silent. 

“That is fucking magnificent. What about it?”

“They are working in perfect condition, but I notice I was the first one to touch them, heal them in ages.”

“How long would “ages” be?”

“Over ten years.”

Both his eyebrow rose until they were lost in his hairline. 

“That is downright impossible."

"Uhum. In a ninja word, with ninja fights, with ninja healers."

“How long is he here?” 

“Six days, Kakashi. You told us to only call you if we couldn’t get nothing.” her voice was much more soft now.

He ran his hand over his face and took a drag and a sip. A ton of papers were all over the table. All the notes they took of what the prisoner said. The things they got were in the line of

_"I heard old man Teuchi is ‘bout to get some concorrence”;_

_"When I was four, we had a swing that the older man, just imagine that, set on fire when they had a fight. If they fought a lot? You tell me.”; _

_“My dog died when I was on a mission”; _

_“I hate spicy food most of the time”; _

_"Land of Water fucking sucks at winter”; _

_“I once met a man with a ginger hair that had his own punk band and he was good on mosh pits. You don’t know what is a mosh pit? What kind of interrogator are you?”; “_

_"My mom was a kunoichi, thank you very much, we used to get takeouts or to get food from my cousin”; _

_"Yeah, I had a girlfriend once. How that’s not what you asked me? You asked me to tell you something.”; _

With both hands in the table, he leaned into it, looking at all the papers scaterred, sparse, aplenty papers. They took notes on all the official things he said (that were mostly bullshit), his state, his body heat, his weight, his condition, his diet, his reflexes, his official record when he popped in. Everything. All they had on him on the past, all they gathered now. They were trying to make sense of a puzzle with missing parts. This prisoner was the missing part of a grand picture.

He was sadly set aside, because right after him a firework show exploded and he went straight to a locker that had tons of dust when they looked into it now.

“It has to be something here.” 

“You are the genius.”

He gave her a dark look, which she just shrugged off, but he saw the thin lines in her lips. 

“Kakashi,” she called over from her place in the table after a while, he just hummed, not even lifting his head, “we are gonna laugh of this stupid shit one day.”

“I know. I just wish I was fucking laughing now.”

“Well,

“_When I lost my virginity, you see, it was with a civilian girl, fuck clan shit, but she actually said another man’s name. Yeah, that hurt.” _

or

“_Once my team captain had gonorrhea."_

She pointely looked at him and he just gave her the middle finger, which made her laugh. “Really, I want to make him swallow his teeth, but when he’s unconscious I feel less murderous and, come on,” she grabbed a piece of paper, looking rather proud of herself, “_I remember vividly having a nightmare of a wood-faced terrifying man.”._ I bet Tenzo would be proud of himself. And if he knows Tenzo -”

_ “Yamato.” _

“Oh, fuck off. If he knows Tenzo and know his creepy face we’re just…” she sighed, putting the papers back, but Kakashi understood. He was looking at paper after paper and searching over his book. 

“Something is missing.”

“_My teeth.” _

“Ready to talk?”

“‘Can try’.” the man was obviously now struggling with speaking, so the woman healed him superficially, making sure no vital points were affected and helping with his teeth. He tried to mouth a thank you, but didn’t quite manage with the amount of blood coming out of his mouth. 

Kakashi had a pained expression on his face. None of them could see, both had their backs to him. She was healing and sitting him more properly and Kakashi was left looking at them, his arms crossed in front of him, his back to the wall, the table with the man's life at his side. Maybe one day he could describe to someone how much it was for him to conduce this interrogation. 

Once the man was sitting in the chair, his features now recognizable and less swallow, but still bruised, Kakashi, again, just blurted, his voice as impassive as ever. 

"Pain, from the Akatsuki. He killed me when he invaded the village." 

"And how are you alive?" 

"I could ask you the same." 

The man hissed a bit when he tried to take a deep breath — his rib was broken, and the rest of him sure as hell wasn't okay. With just a look Kakashi signalled for the man to be partially out of pain - he looked about to enter in shock.

_(When she kneeled to heal him, she didn't care anymore. Her hair was still plastered with blood and she could feel it tickle her face. Looking at him, for the thousandth time, never lost the same effect. Not having his eyes to look back at her was worse than being stared at.)_

With a sound of relief and the sound of a cigarette being smashed into the floor he simply said: "How did Itachi appear to you? Was he still alive?" 

Clearing his throat, Kakashi fled the question. 

"You were right on "everyone should be dead", but apparently no one really dies, do they?" 

"They kinda do." the man said matter of fact, lifting just one shoulder, his face telling them he oughta be really helpful stating that.

"Who died?" 

"Do you want to do this in chronological order?" 

It was the limit.

Tsunade hit the table with her hand so roughly it broke the thing in two, leaving some dust up (and messing up completely all the papers). All Kakashi could do was sigh. 

This time Kakashi's hand couldn't shush her and she seemed ready to rip his hand off. Tsunade didn't like to be shushed. She only agreed on staying in silence and not letting all of her healing chakra take place because Kakashi thought it was better for her to remain unknown as much as possible. The man didn't seem to know she was once the Hokage so he could be kept in the dark a while longer. 

"Stop shitting me, you brat. Start talking or you won't be able to feel the relief of a healed wound until another one is made." 

"So, it really is the Slug Princess. It is a honour to finally meet you." 

Tsunade didn't seem flattered as she pulled the man in her direction with enough strength to dislocated his shoulder to which he howled with the knockdown pain. 

"Tsunade!" Kakashi hissed, again, now saying her name, when he took her hands out of him and she let go off him, letting him fall as a piece of pudim. He was still holding her hands and even though he was much taller than her, she was looking him in the eye and what seemed to be the beginning of a _ I’ve told you already _ discussion the man said, for the first time in almost one week, something worthy

“He used to always talk about you.” he said in a relaxed tone, even though he had now one more bone in his body causing him pain. 

“Who? Who, boy? Who talked about me?” Tsunade was over him, grabbing him by his shirt again, but not so violently. 

He smiled, toothless, but his eyes turned to her, as if he was happy. “Orochimaru.”

Her hands glowed green without him saying anything. In a heartbeat all his injuries were healed, but she didn't give him the benefit of the pain release. Just bones mending and bruises leaving without the numbness they could put with their chakra. 

“So, I take you still care for your old team mate?”

“Do you?” Kakashi asked back and the man, for the first time, retracted into himself. Tsunade lifted one eyebrow. 

Orochimaru wasn’t a taboo between them, but it wasn’t discussed without the presence of everyone. It was for the best, they decided.

When it came to Orochimaru, the dicussions always pointed to everywhere and nowhere. He was always in the middle of something and in nothing at all. There were times Orochimaru seemed the best shit ever, the man that was everywhere and knew everyone, managed to get into ever hole, but the truth was that he was trying to survive and he was just half good at it. None of them feared him like they used to when they were young. He was just another rogue ninja. 

But, an interrogation seemed to be the very exception to explore the topic and he was so talkative out of nowhere, but Orochimaru had betrayed them so many times they wouldn't risk it. It could be just him throwing a bait after he didn’t have anything else. Orochimaru was always an ace upon the sleeve.

Tsunade made a point to heal him terribly slowly, mostly making pressure over his wounds and causing more pain before the healing end. 

"Tsunade..." Kakashi said, asked tiredly and, after a few seconds, she gave in and the man was ready to go. She left a bruise with the shape of her hand over his arm, though. 

"Okay!" the man raised his hands, bruise in place, in not-so mocked surrender. "Okay. I will collaborate." 

"You don't have to "collaborate", kid. That word we use to _ war _ prisoners, _nice_ war prisoners. You came for yourself. Even though I'm beginning to think we should've thought of something a bit worse for — Oh, finally!" She interrupted herself and turned to the door. 

Ibiki marched in, just shooting a look at the broken table and placed a few tools at the floor, just where Kakashi had stepped on his cigarette. 

(It's funny how it always left black traces. Asuma's didn't.) He then handed a small bottle to each Hokage-ish in the room and left a bigger one beside the tools. Tsunade whispered something that sounded a lot like "set the boy on fire for a show" to which Kakashi regarded her with a hard look over his drink. In the top of her magnitude Tsunade stuck her tongue out and Kakashi was left wondering if Sakura and Tsunade hadn't overpass the limit of time one can spend with another. 

The door closed with a click and Ibiki stepped to the middle of the room, his hitai-ate hiding his bald battle scars. His face was as dangerous as always. 

He looked the man from head to toe. Took in his mischievous hair, his riven clothes, the way the dry blood was all over him, his dry lips with fresh scars — the fresh scars all over him from the interrogation, the old scars from his life, the way his smile was boyish under the layers of pain and hours of torture, the absence of his eyes, two shallow spots regarding him back, his hands with bones in awkward positions. Everything in him screamed homeless plus interrogated and that image never was pretty. The smile, still, was out of the picture, escaping the frame.

"So it is true. You're alive." 

"Pretty much, uhum." 

"And you came back with an attitude" 

"Wouldn't say I did-" 

"I wasn't asking." 

"Oh" 

"Okay." 

He double checked the boy again and turned to Tsunade 

"What do we have?" 

The eye exchange between her and Kakashi wasn’t missed by Ibiki. 

"We have a lot of my patience lost in here. I swear to God I didn't threw a chair at his face 'cause there isn't any here despite the one he's sitting." 

"Yeah, I know," Kakashi said, rolling his cigarette in his fingers "I asked them to remove anything that could be thrown.” 

"What? Why the fuck? I could've- this could've gone a lot faster if I- how dare you?" 

"Tsunade!" the woman fixated her gaze at his face, her face flushed and looking like she could throw him. "Calm down. You're not good at the whole information gathering" 

"What?" 

“You need to keep your cool." the man answered instead of Kakashi, flashing a smile, like he was being truly helpful. 

"Oh, you brat!" 

Apparently, both men forgot how fast Tsunade could be because in a blink of an eye the man was punched to the wall that cracked minimally (interrogation rooms have to have the strongest walls for obvious reasons, but _ of course _ Tsunade would be able to crack it).

Kakashi sighed with a hand in his temple and felt he was again dealing with a team of gennin. 

"Tsunade! Jesus Christ, calm down.”

“Why the fuck would I calm down? We’re walking in circles. This fucker probably came here just to seek shelter.”

“We’re still at peace.” Ibiki said plakant and still with his face resembling a doberman ready to jump and drool between his teeth. 

“For the moment.”

“You ruined the chair, Tsunade.” Kakashi pointed. 

“Fuck the chair.” she was fumbling, tidying up her clothes, dusting them off. They looked at the man laying at floor - for the third time of the day. He wasn’t moving. “Oh fuck, don’t tell me I killed him.”

“You didn’t.” Kakashi waved with his hand while he was handed a chair by the door. He raised the man of the ground with one hand and set him with another. This chair didn’t have arms, just a seat and a backboard. He was slipping out and Kakashi had to hold him to avoid him from falling face flat to the ground

“He’s out again.” 

“Why are you giving me this look, boy? Every punch this boy took was well deserved. Now wake him up.”

“You’re the medic.”

“Enough with this bullshit.” Tsunade hit the ground with her feet and it made a whole on the concrete. The floor was also harder than the regular ones. “Enough! I am not going to be shushed anymore nor suppressing my chakra.” She marched in the direction of Kakashi. “Get the fuck out of my way.” he rose up carefully, eyeing her strangely. She put both hands in the man’s temple. “Wake the fuck up, boy!”

The man jolted awake and his not-eyes (his sock balls) widened, his back straight. 

“I’ve had enough of this. I am the Fifth Hokage and you all will treat me as such. You included, Hatake. I don’t care you wear the hat now. I will not bow to no one, kid.” 

Knowing better than trying to placate her, Kakashi just shook his head in understanding and let her. 

“Ok, kid, I am sick tired of this. You haven’t proved being valuable to us so far. We can feed you to the wolves in the blink of an eye. If you just marched here thinking your name would protect you, you were dead wrong. You are lucky you are alive, because your name is almost a curse here and you should've known better.”

“I do know.” his voice was throttled, but serious. “I know about my name.”

“Why did you use it then?”

“Would you hear otherwise?” 

His voice was tired and broken, his gleeful lost in the cracks of the wall. 

_ (It clicked inside Tsunade. She had a jumpstart based on her descendance. How serious would she be treated without being a Senju? At her time, during the Second War, women were nothing but medic-nin. She became a Legendary Sannin. But would’ve she even have had the chance to try to prove her worthy without this backup? She was just a girl like many others. She would have remained the same. People were now threatened by her intelligence and her strength, but would the Third Hokage took her under his wing if she was just a blonde temperamental girl? Would he value her? Or she would be what Sakura were to Kakashi?) _

“In the end, all you have is your name.” he said and smiled and she could fucking see her little brother there, in that smile. Not all the ninja had to say they wanted to be Hokage to shatter her with her grief. That man managed. 

In the silence that stretched, Tsunade kept eyeing him, until she gave him her back and drunk with drops falling over her chin. 

“What did he tell you?" Ibiki asked, massaging his temple. 

Ibiki was a very collected and closed man. Very few people managed to get on his nerve and Tsunade was one of those. 

"Nothing!” the moment passed. The man smiled. “He didn't tell me nothing! Not one useful thing. And then Hatake decided it was better if he didn't know it was me." 

"Hatake was right." 

"I fucking know Hatake was right." if she could throw something or slam her hands at something, she would've. Instead, she just waved her hands and her hair was falling loose. "It didn't fucking work. The boy knew it was me." 

"What did he know?" 

"About the village?" Kakashi answered leaning into one pilar. "Not much. He was alien to most news, so he didn't know about me being the Hokage and knew mostly about whispers about Tsunade, nothing concrete." 

"The War?" Ibiki raised his eyebrows. 

The I&T usually (never) discuss anything in front of the prisoners, but this one was different. There was no need to hide these things from him. It wasn’t like they were discussing the nothingness he gave them so far.

"Didn't fight in it." Ibiki wrigled a eyebrow but Kakashi waved him off, taking another sip. "Was at a civilian village, but protected them through Madara's." 

"The whole month?" his voice was cruel and dead as ever despite the surprise.

"Uhum." the three of them turned to him. "I was very helpful. Not completely useless." 

In a flare of chakra that seemed to heat the whole room Ibiki summoned The Cage. Tsunade's lips quirked in a cruel smile. Kakashi drank. 

Apparently, the man’s good humour was the last thing people wanted from him. On the other hand, he was perfect on pushing people’s strings.

Immediately, he was out of his chair and pressed against the iron cell, straps closed over his wrists and ankles.

"Why aren't you cooperating?" Ibiki said marching in front of him.

"I am!" it was impossible to tell if he was joking or not.

"You aren't." Kakashi reminded him in a way that sounded a lot the way he talked to Naruto when he said something stupid. 

"What do you know about Madara Uchiha?" 

"Almost nothing." 

"Almost?" 

The man cringed. 

"I know what everybody knows. Legendary shinobi, founder of The Leaf, came back from the dead and started a war." 

"And that's all?" 

"That's all." 

"Why should we believe in you?" 

"Why not?" he asked in some tone akin defiance. Morino _ hated _ defiance. 

Ibiki's summon glued to one of his arm and, keeping his whole body in place, pulled it to a point it almost fell of the junt. 

"Fuck! What's the need of doing that? I am telling —" 

"I am going to ask again. What do you know about Madara Uchiha?" Ibiki leaned, his hands crossed over his back, his face dangerously close even if the man couldn’t see, he could feel the hot breath at his face. 

"I fucking told you already!" the smile was gone. A grimace of pain took its place. "I know shit about him." 

“You seemed to know a lot just two seconds ago.”

“A lot?” a harder push. “Fuck shit. I don’t know shit about him.”

“How do you know about the War?”

“Is there someone that doesn’t?”

Morino straightened his back and knee quicked him at the stomach. The man spit blood. 

His arm was so straight and pulled to the side it made him look like half a puppet.

“Do you like the pain, boy?” Ibiki almost barked at his face. He didn't like when people didn't get scared right away. He hated Pain's summon and, out with the part of being just an empty vessel, that man reminded him of _that_. 

He didn't seem close to break.

Kakashi could see the retort coming _(__you’re the one that get off on it) _and stepped in.

“How do you know about it? How do you know about the war?”

“Everyone knew.” he was panting. “Even the civilians. They took a lot of -” he was having a hard time breathing, sweat falling from his temple and his face was growing pale. “Many, many were killed. They didn’t know who Madara was.”

“Then how did you know the war was against him?”

“People talk.” 

He went silent and it couldn’t be said if it was due the pain or stubbornness. 

“Morino.” Tsunade ordered with a shake of her head. His arm was pulled harder and the skin was ripped. His baw filled the room and seemed to enter their minds like a woodworm. “Unlike you.” She finished with her voice strong.

The man was looking at them, laboured breath and his empty eye balls were producing tears.

“Shinobi.” he said finally. 

Tsunade healed his wound, making it stop the bleeding and at the moment his face was about to contort to relief, she pressed with enough strength to crash his bones.

“Fuck! Fuck woman!”

“Talk.” Ibiki ordered, low and deliberated.

“_You_," he spat, as a course "you shinobi, you talk. Every village you walk in, you leave whispers behind. _(__You leave bodies behind)_ I only managed to pull all the pieces together in time to protect them.” 

That was enough of an answer for the day.

"Where have you been in the last ten years?" 

"Around?" he said as in a question, no humour, but with humour still. The string pulled even more. He didn't say anything else. 

"Around?" he was quiet. "Just around?" another pull. Ibiki was growing impatient.

The bone falling out of place was heard among the howl, the guttural sound. If he screamed when Tsunade hurt him that was a whole new level of Dante’s Inferno. Tsunade wasn't smiling anymore. 

"Tell us about." Kakashi's voice came down like a thunderstorm over the place. Yet, over the screams, a storm is always welcome. 

He was screaming over the pain, but it was nothing more than they already knew - been around, alien to the world, small villages, knew things, heard things over the decades. Nothing concrete.

Ibiki looked at them, asking for quiet permission. 

He proceeded. 

The summoned cage was in the process of attaching his whole body to the _ golden _ iron chains (not even Kakashi had seen what they do, just the results) when he said:

"An old lady once told me that when a dog bites the worse is" he had to catch his breath before proceeding "the amount of blood than the momentary pain. Did you know that?" He looked at Ibiki. He looked so much like the goddamned fucking doll, all tied up and read to die in pain, but smiling, talking about fucking dogs. "The stitches only hurt later, when they open -" 

(Something flicked in the air. Not outside, not something Kakashi even recognized at the moment. Something flickered out of the man’s body. A body’s flicker under his eyes would got through only the sharingan and then: 

"Fucking changed my mind." Kakashi pushed himself off the wall, his eyes dark. "Tsune, please, leave." 

"Hatake, what are you" 

"Just leave.” 

The summoned cage disappeared leaving the man to fall half to his feet beside the chair. He didn’t had the strength to pull himself up.

Ibiki didn't need an order. 

"Lord Hokage." he bowed as he left. Kakashi's _ cut this bullshit _ was said to the closed door. 

“Fix him.”

"You don't talk to me like that, boy!" Tsunade was with her finger pointed so closely to his face it was a surprise she didn’t pulled out his eyes as well. 

“Tsunade, the man is bleeding in the floor and he will get into shock before I can say “suflair”.” Her chest was expanding and her hand was raising and he didn’t know if it was to slap him or lecture him. “Please, Tsune?”

“You take this.” she put a pill down the man’s throat, sitting him up. Kakashi rose a questioning eyebrow at her. “Jesus fuck, don’t you listen to her rambling?” 

“Oh.”

“Hum, would you two mind telling me what she just shoved down my throat? It would be anticlimactic to die poisoned after a week of torture.” the man's voice was raspy, and he was laying on the floor, his mouth full of blood, his whole frame looked so minimal. 

"Oh man." Kakashi pinched the bridge of his nose.

“And, well, be glad she doesn’t ripp your eyes off. It sucks to live without them.”

Even Tsunade’s finger stopped in the air. 

He had to be fucking kidding.

Questions like “How does he know her finger is at his face?” or “Did he hit his head so hard he doesn’t know when to stop joking?” or, the one they kept asking, “Is he really blind?”, but at the stupid joke Kakashi felt the urge to burst into laughter. 

That was it, the joke was funny, he wanted to laugh, but he wasn't allowed to. He nevertheless chuckled a bit to himself and the six eyes drove into him instantly. Tsunade's forehead vein throb and the man just fell into little chuckle himself — six eyes because the last pair of eyes were from Sakura that was perched just out of the window, prepping. A second later she was caught by Morino and almost fell off. Kakashi laughed a little more. No one asked why. The few cons of being the Hokage. 

Still smiling, Kakashi turned to him, and punched him punctual in the face. It was clear as the day that Tsunade wanted to do the same. Her eyes were frantically rushing through the whole room and at every second her face grew redder. She was still searching for something to break or to throw or some shit like that. The woman was fumbling and heat among with chakra was circling her. A fair man would probably back off, but Kakashi didn't give a single removably shit.

"You sound like a teenager. Please, leave and break some things outside." 

She didn't move an inch and the murderous stare was now directed to him. She really looked like a rebellious teenager, with such a young face and temper. He really wasn't up to put with any of this - the interrogation, Tsunade, the war, the way his stomach roared, the smiling man with an already growing slowly bruise at his cheek. He just was fucking thirsty and he wanted nothing but drink himself 'till he choke on his vomit and died. He ran a hand over his face, feeling the weight of being Hokage, being a prodigy ninja, being a drunk, everything. He hold back a sigh. 

"I let you pick the tool I'll use." Kakashi said, defeated. 

It was like offering a candy to a small child in exchange of its goddamn silence — except it was so twisted it was like buying a ticket straight to hell or something like that. 

The woman just gave a sinister grin and even his blood ran cold. She eyed thoughtfully the tools at the floor: a small axe, a sharp little knife, a really big scissor, a thumbscrew, a whip, an electroshock weapon (his favourite. He would always put his own electricity), a instep borer, a tanto, (for fuck's sake) a katana, a boot (used to crash injuries, don't be fooled. One type was made of four pieces of narrow wooden board nailed together. The boards were measured to fit the victim's leg. Once the leg was enclosed, wedges would be hammered between the boards, creating pressure. The pressure would be increased until the victim confessed or lost consciousness. Newer variants have included iron vises—sometimes armed with spikes—that squeezed feet and metal frames employed red-hot), a hammer, a nipper, a saw and a switchblade.

He remembered an article he read ages ago about torture methods some sick preachers would use on heretics. 

_"While the accused heretics were on strappado or the rack, inquisitors often applied other torture devices to their bodies. These included heated metal pincers, thumbscrews, boots, or other devices designed to burn, pinch or otherwise mutilate their hands, feet or bodily orifices (...)_" 

He was good at torture, just as he was good at everything. He didn't have any hesitation to retrieve information. He often killed the victims after the suffering that made them sell their souls - no use on keeping some one who might speak someday - leaving no trait of his actions. But now he couldn't actually kill him afterwards. He didn't even knew if he would kill him at any time. 

But, right now, he resigned to punch and poke him with sharp objects, hot metal burns, hang him upside down by the hands till it resulted on a dislocated shoulder, boil a soup under the fire underneath his seat, pull all his limbs each way stretching the skin, slit his ankles and ask him to run, cut little fingers, make so much noise he would throw up and pass out, expose him to exaggerated light and then let him meet darkness for what would seem eternity, not letting him sleep, starve him, whip his legs and arms, puncture nails at his hands, poke slowly under his fingernails just for then rip it away, he would rip off the new eyes he had, hit him on the spots that would hurt for days, tie and smash his balls, burn his tongue, rip his teeth; the list went on: blinding with light, bone breaking, branding, castration, water torture, cold cell, combing, crushing, cutting, dehydration, drowning, dry-boarding, dunking, flagellation, foot roasting, foot whipping, hamstringing, hypothermia, impalement, keelhauling, kneecapping, noise , oxygen deprivation, pressure points, sawing, scalping, sensory overload, shinbone crusher, sound (extremely high volumes, dynamic range, low frequency, high pitched noise, intended to interfere with rest, cognition and concentration), strappado (also known as "reverse hanging", stress positions, thumbscrew, waterboarding... 

Without counting the psychological torture - if he had the will to do it today.

But he wouldn't kill him. 

And the best was that he could heal him to perfection and then do it all again. 

Kakashi felt _ her _ chakra signature in front of the window that showed the interrogation room — she managed to pass by Ibiki and return to the window. 

Sakura had not only seem, but inflicted a lot of torture methods, some she learnt from watching him. She knew he was looking directly and precisely where she was. She shifted her leg from one leg to another. She wasn't sure what she was waiting to see, but she felt compelled. When Tsunade closed the door, she eyed her skeptically, but her face dropped when she saw the look on Sakura's face: Determination. Anger. Outrage. Chagrin. _ Madness _. Displeasure. But the most shocking one was the familiarity her eyes leaked. 

Tsunade knew from that moment that Sakura wasn't not even remotely the girl she once knew.

War changes every one. 

She just didn't expect Sakura to change so much. 

The girl panicked at a genjutsu of her childish crush impelled and, now, she was just staring as she was about to predict his movements. It all departed, vanished when the whole room went black. He had placed a jutsu that wouldn't allow any of them to see or hear what was going on.

Few had the privilege to seal, berate an interrogation room. Even amongst interrogators, even amongst ANBU it was rare. Hell, even amongst the Hokages. 

Sakura was pure ire at this moment. Kakashi could sense it, but he had more pressing matters in hand. The man was their best lead to anywhere as they had nowhere else to go and everyone wanted to take a look at it, but Kakashi just now realised the man would open up to him only. 

And that made perfect sense. 

Kakashi dragged a chair (he caught when he got Tsunade out of the door) into the room and put it directly in front of the interrogated. He lifted his head slowly, his face stoic and his eyes betraying nothing. 

"You know me. _ You know me_. You know what I am capable of. You've seen me do it enough times already, but you were never at the end of it.” he put one foot over the seat of a iron chair, leaning both of his arms into his leg, the other one at the floor. He lit another cigarette. “You are today. And I suggest you talk."

The silence stretched until he hit his left hand with an enormous strength with the hammer and the sound of broken bone filled the room. The boy spat blood from trying to bite his on tongue not to scream. Kakashi slapped his face. 

“Don’t fucking do it.” 

The man was breathing hard, blood already dripping from his chin and his hand.

"I can't see why you don't talk. Shit." 

Taking a deep drag, running his hand over his overly messy gray hair, nails meeting the scalp, Kakashi closed his eyes and did his best to copy Kakuzu’s jutsu and turned his hand into something earthy - and hit the man’s side with full strength. The bones cracking filled the room.

Kakashi immediately healed the worst damage - he always did that in interrogations. 

"Why aren't you talking?" 

When the man didn't say anything, barely opened his eyes, he sighed and lifted the hammer again only to smash it at the wood of where his arms were tied. At the shock of not being attacked combined with the pain of actually being attacked, he opened his eyes. What was left of his eyes as all the man had was to hollow balls. 

His sight was a bit terrifying. His hair was long, a beard tickled his chin, his face and visible body were full of nasty scars and he had no eyes. His whole body was covered in blood at one point or another, his face was pointing in strange angles from being badly healed. He was bone and flesh, his skin pale. Children would have nightmares about him forever. 

Kakashi kept taking drags on his cigarette while the eyeless eyed him. With a loud sigh he smashed his cigarette at the man's left hand. He hissed and contorted his face, breath ragged.

"That," Kakashi pointed with his thumb to the door "that, what you said, it was about my father." 

The man just kept breathing and hissing, looking like a caged animal left in the open wild. 

"_Talk._" 

It was an order. Not an interrogation one, but a fielding one. One you don't disobey. 

Sighing a deep sigh, the man finally spoke, none of the boyish bubbled through him this time.

"They can't hear us." it wasn't a question, it was a statement. Kakashi didn't answer. "Yes. It was about him."

Kakashi stood in silence, shaking his head and taking drags from his cigarette. He had so many questions, about that, about how he knew that, so many things, that he remained silent, locked up in his own head. 

Clearing his throat and them grunting in pain, the man said. "Okay. What do you want to know?" 

"How are you alive?" 

"I wasn't supposed to. I was ready to die, it was my intent.” he stopped, considering his words. “I just ended lying in pain, with a twisted wrist and an ankle, shoulder broken, another one dislocated, just a inch of a broken spine - tough luck - a broken arm, the femur was terribly fucking exposed fracture. There was no point in trying to distinguish broken bones from scratches from what could’ve been burns in other lives. It just hurt like hell. Blood was coating me everywhere and I have never wished death so much. ” it was like he was seeing all of that again, all his body completely unusable, lying waiting for dead. “But death didn't came. A farmer did." he skirmishers on the chair. Kakashi placed his hand above his and he shrunk further in the chair. His hand began to glow green. 

"I am shitty at healing, but I can try enough so it stop hurting so much." he muttered below his breath, his voice as detached as ever while he was trying to piece everything together, but nothing made sense still. "Go on." 

"The farmer took me to his house and rolled me up on bandages. He wanted to take me to an hospital, but I didn't let him. I told him I wanted to die and, well, I couldn't see it, but I am pretty sure he looked exasperated. He just shoved me further in the bed and said he was still bringing wood to the house and he would be back in a few hours. Before he left he gave me water and I drank like a golden fish that got back to the ocean." he chuckled humorless and shook his head a bit. "I didn't want to die. I _ had _ to." after swallowing hard, he dropped his head and Kakashi was sure he would be leaning his arms to his knees if he could, so he untied the man after finishing poorly fixing his other hand. 

"Do you smoke?" was blurted abruptly. 

"Well, not really. And I am almost sure you didn't as well, taic-" 

"I didn't, but I do now." That being said he shoved the cigarette onto the man's mouth and lit it. He didn't complain and didn't choke. Sure as hell he had smoked before, but who didn't? At some point in the life everyone smokes, even if just a drag. The human curiosity was something else. And, if not by curiosity, someone always shoved down their throat a cigarette just for 'Give it a try'. 

That was how he smoked for the first time. He was eleven and an older guy in a mission just tucked the cigarette to his mouth and he cuffed all the way long. He only smoked again two years later, the day Obito died. The day Obito died changed absolutely every aspect of his life. Was the first time he got drunk too, despite his small frame walking into the bar. Probably bar owner's don't give a shit about how old you are, as long as you pay. Which wasn't the case as the boy shunshied away. So he made the man smoke and smoke he did. Even people that didn't smoke took long, blissful drags, the nicotine always calm them down and that was what was needed. To calm down. Calm down and feel some sense of faux protection. Calm down and pretend he felt at home. Calm down and stop his shaking hands as he was sure the story of the farmer didn't end well. 

“He left a bottle of water.” was spurred out as the way the smoking question did. “A few hours later, I guess, I was a bit relieved from the pain, so I guess he put something on my glass. If it was poison, I didn't care at all, but it was _ just _ painkillers. Even though just painkillers developed to something much bigger. Something I never would’ve seen.” 

Kakashi's eye darted to the window he knew Sakura was behind. The blind man obviously didn't see it, but he sensed his abrupt movement. He was still in a pretty good shape to someone without eyes. 

“Know someone that went through the same drug problem?” his question was met with silence, as the interrogator was interrogated with a simple question, he stiffed. Kakashi forced his heart to beat into a ordinary rhythm. There was no way he knew, he could’ve known. 

The man kept talking as if he didn’t notice he said something that turned the tables.

“His wife came home less than half a hour than her husband. I heard their whispers in what I assumed was the kitchen, but couldn't make out what they were saying, but only in that moment I realised their accent was odd. Apparently, I was carried long away from the village and was at a civilian one. In a moment she popped at my side and placed her hand at my forehead. _ Burning, _ was what she said and after that I passed out from the pain as she set the first bone back to its place. I must have been really drugged as I just woke up several hours later. Then the healing process began. It took three months before I could even walk again. Not having chakra healing is shit. Even as I sensed little waves of my own chakra, it didn't really help that much. Only after two more months I could begin training again. As I was alive, I might as well be useful. I didn't know if I should head back, but it was my original plan, but then, god knows how long after, I heard about the massacre. And I threw up. And again and again. The thought that Itachi slaughtered the whole clan made my hair's in the back of my neck stiff. It wasn't like him, he was the most pacifist person I've ever known. You know that too." it wasn't an accusation, but it sure felt like one. '_I can't believe you believed he was a cold blooded murderer when you should've known better_' was what was left unsaid. "Anyway, unlike you, I knew about the coup, so it all clicked in place. And I felt like an utter piece of shit. I was a coward. I could've stayed and fought, but I decided it was better to run away. To chicken out and let someone bare alone such a responsibility." 

"You shouldn't be ashamed of that." 

"Being a coward?" the bitter note wasn’t missed by a beat.

"Sacrificing." when the man sneered, Kakashi blew a full mouth smoke into his face which made him cough. Kakashi smiled deviously. "Don't be a martyr and don't be dramatic. It doesn't suit you." 

They smoked in silence for some time, the only sound their own breaths and heartbeats. All around was quiet. He flared his chakra to let them know it was alright and they didn't need to worry. Not that they were worried, the two women. They were probably just pure ire. 

"I know about it." 

The man said in a soft voice, his not-eyes turned to the floor, something akin affection in his voice. Kakashi head snapped at his direction, his eyes widening and he's never been so happy for one's blindness.

“About -” Kakashi’s voice was barely a whisper, it could be taken as a mountain claiming the morning sun. You can’t hear unless you are paying attention. He uttered so low, hopping the topic would die. 

Did he know about Sakura? If he did, all he said until know was utter and pure bullshit. He was nothing but a traitor. There was no salvation here. There was nothing for him here.

"I know about the two of you. I've always had." Kakashi decided in that moment that he preferred when he was being judged than being _ pitied._

Because that’s what it was: pity. And it wasn’t about Sakura. 

It was worse. It was about a ghost. A ghost that laid untouched for so, so long.

So he said "Hum." 

"I couldn't not know.” the man went on, the small smile forming in his lips. The tiniest of it, the blood still at his tongue. “I was his best friend, after all." he lifted his head and _ looked _ at Kakashi.

"Sasuke is dead." 

The change of subject could be interpreted as him running from the primer matter, but it wasn't. He just felt he needed to voice it. 

"So I've heard. But I got to say I thought it was just a rumor. And... did he really killed Itachi?"

Kakashi nodded before even realise he was talking to a blind man. Again. He really wasn't used to blind people at all. He was used at people's stare, mostly the stare of those who died by his hand. 

"I see." no, you don't, his mind filled in and he almost felt bad for the poor joke. Almost. "Ta—"

"Don't." he was cut harshly. "Don't call me that." 

"Why not? You were my captain, after all." 

Silence. 

"You think you don't deserve it? The respect?" 

Silence. 

"Why?" 

He asked again and again silence it was. 

"Is it because of him?" 

Silence. 

"She doesn't know about it, does she?" Shit, what? How did the kid even knew about her. He was staring intently at his direction with such a scrutinizing way he wondered, not for the first time, if the man was really blind. "I am really blind" fucking mind reader as well? "And I don't read minds. I'm just used to it. Without sight, I had to learn to handle myself.” 

"Why you didn't want to speak?" 

"Would you, Kakashi? Be honest with me? If you vanished and was declared dead for over a decade would you be happy to open up to people that easily?" 

He deflected. 

"We're not just people, we're comrades." The words sounded empty even to him. 

"No. You aren't. You are strangers. You can take me as traitor any second and send me to death." 

There was a clock ticking in the wall and for the first time Kakashi noticed that. Probably the clock alone was torture. He stood there in silence just staring at the man, wondering what he should do. He was not a traitor, but he had over a decade to come back and didn't. 

"Why?" 

It was all he said. He didn't elaborate. Didn't press or ask further. Just why. Just understand and answer why. 

"Because." 

Fucking great. 

He sighed. Kakashi took from his pocket a small bottle he always carries with him. 

"Do you drink?" 

The man tilted his head as if giving it a thought for the first time ever. "I guess." He shrugged. 

Kakashi took a big gulp and passed it to him that hissed. 

"Strong shit." Kakashi fulfilled before he spoke. The man smiled. 

"Everyone says that?" 

"I said that the first time I drank it." 

"It's not sake. Is it vodka?" 

A silver eyebrow raised so high it disappeared over his hairline. 

"How do you —" 

"I traveled East. I didn't settled down as a farmer raising goats. I've been everywhere. That's why i didn't return." 

"Why did you take all this time to say it to me? Tsunade could've killed you. She wanted to. She was willing to, even." 

Again, he shrugged. 

"How do I know if I can trust you?" 

"Kid, I'm the Hokage." 

The man laughed and he sounded the same as he did when he was sixteen. 

"You do sound the same as you did all those years ago, taichou." 

"Don't call me that." Kakashi said in a heartbeat, always that harsh voice at his given titles. 

"Lord Hokage is better?" 

He just rolled his eyes and offered the bottle again. 

"So." 

"So." 

Kakashi rolled the chair in front of him and sat on it, his usual slouch even if all of his senses were completely tuned. 

"Ready to talk, Shisui?"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hehe, yeah. I love him way too much to leave him out of it.   
Jesus fuck, I loved writing this, but I've been so, so, so unmotivated I have no words to express it. Really. Like, look how many hits, it makes my heart go all fuzzy and warm, but then I look at like 20 kudos and I can't help to think that people opened it, read two sentences and then sent it to hell.  
Yeah, just wanted to say that.  
And that I've got like 70k written and I am just afraid of being a fucking loser.  
now, it has been really difficult to me to write because I got back to college after a few years so there is a lot to do and to read and God it is so weird and scary to leave my house and this fic means so fucking much to me, so please, please, leave kudos, comments, press F5 so it can get more hits, idk, bookmarks, i dont know. I am putting my soul into this and I just want one thing in my life to be recognized, you know? i feel like an annoying child beggning, but yeah, fuck it. hope you like. it won't be all sad forever. and I have a really nive plot with a loooot of reserach and the last part is completely messy but I promise it will make so much more sense. yeahh. it there is someone out there, love ya.


	3. I'd Tell You, But (CID 10 Z63)

In the battlefield there are five things that cross your mind like a toy spinning top:  
Do I care if I survive this? A beautiful moment happened here. To live is to devour others. Hell is not a place. Hell is other people. The things we crave the most are the things that kill us.  
But mostly and more frequently: _I've seen the future, and I'm not going._

* * *

_June 3014, 4 years after the beginning of the 4th Great Ninja War_

* * *

IT WAS A FRIDAY. He knew it was a friday ‘cause Gai's been there. His wheelchair trait was still on the wet grass. Gai only came at fridays. He came everyday — but, today, it was a friday. It was raining. It was a downpour. It was cold. It was almost winter. _ (according to the Weather Forecast, the situation was about: _

_ temperature: 4º _

_ rain: 100% _

_ humidity: 93% _

_ wind: 34 km/h _

Maybe it should be snowing. He wasn’t all the fond of snow. Sakura was. It froze his fingers and that was never good in the battlefield. She liked to crack frozen lakes and that worked on Kakuzu once. He wasn’t in the battlefield right now, even though he wish he was. He always wanted to die, didn’t he? At least, that’s what everyone said. (They were due to leave tomorrow, anyway. Head South. It wasn’t over, he wondered if it ever would be. His fingertips would be frozen and his eyes would bleed red, but he would stay. Not leaving a comrade behind also, and mostly, means not letting them die. At least, that’s what it means; unfortunately, not what he does.)

It was late. The sun had set hours ago, shining gold and beautiful, twisted in the marble stone. The sunset always looked beautiful everywhere, no matter the circumstances. Mother nature is really nice and kind, isn’t she? But the sun hat set and now it was just the moon. 

They didn’t put lamp streets that far in the middle of training grounds. That never stopped Kakashi from going there and just staring at the stone.

His muscles stiffen from standing still for so long. They burned like marshmallow forgotten on the fire due a too good bedtime story. He wasn’t used to bedtime stories. He wondered if he ever had a child he probably should - he could just tell the kid about how good of an assassin he was. The kid wouldn't understand anyway, so he mentally shuggered. His whole body ached, from head to toe telling him that he shouldn’t fucking stand in the cold immobile. He let 'them burn. The pain was always glued to him, anyway. 

When you stare at the abyss, it stares back at you —

The stone was meeting him dead in the eye, in a contest to see who'd look away first. 

He was fucking angry, truth be told. No matter how many times your experienced death of your loved ones, it never gets easier. It’s not like training. After a while, the punches don’t hurt you like they used to. Your body responds differently. Your muscles, tendoes, brain, bones don’t feel the impact the same way. You do get used to it. It is your carcace, your vessel, not but flesh and bones._That _you can train so it hurts less. 

But psychological pain is not the same. It’s not that easy. You can’t train. Kakashi tried. He drowned himself in ANBU. If ROOT wasn’t coup d’êtat part II, he probably would be blissfully brainwashed. 

Grief is a bitch. 

Grief shatter you. Have you ever experienced grief? I hope you never do. Not in the wrong order. 

_ (An oldy lady - a civilian, in an Village far, far deep inearthed in mountains, fortunately oblivious to any and each war - in the splendor of her 90’s, told him that was no pain bigger to a mother to bury her own kids. That the natural order it’s always the kids to bury the parents. Kakashi’s tongue itched for him to tell her that not even knowing his mother and finding his father suicidal corpse wasn’t that natural, but she picked in the air before he said anything and poured liquor in his coffee (and in hers). Kakashi doesn’t like to be touched, but when her corrugated hand touched his, her fingers cold and her eyes understandable, not with pity he knew she knew. To her, the old lady named Aimeé, he pulled the mask off. She smiled. She’s dead, nowadays.) _

But, truth is, what is this order, anyway? In the shinobi world, everyone just dies, everyday. Nevertheless, Kakashi feels and always will that he should be the one to die first. So far, all this war has shown is that the dead come back and those who should stay leave - and Kakashi stays as if he is a root, attached and unwavering. He wonders if that's how Akatsuki sees him. He wonders if that's how his Susanoo'o should look like. 

When the self loath began and where does it end? Does if even end someday? Does this war will end?

_ (Ask the bottles.) _

They used to joke that "Does Madara will ever fucking die?" They laughed and passed the wine bottle to one another, just like they will pass the canteen with sake during the trip; but now they will ask "Does this shit will ever fucking end?" But is there anyone who ever knew the answer? It seem war is more of a state than a matter of who, what, where, when. It is like water. Liquid, gaseous, solid. It is there, you just need to look closely. 

You learn to live with it, after a while. We all do. 

His eyes just kept looking at the kanji in front of him. Over and over and over and over. No matter how hard he stared nor how much the prayed to a God he didn’t believe, the words didn't vanish. They didn't rust. They didn’t drop and ran away. They wouldn't let him alone. They wouldn't become lies. 

_ (Because, try to follow before calling me dense: when something becomes lies it isn’t true anymore. And truth means _ everything _ , as much as lies means the same. They say the word isn’t a dichotomy, but when it comes to this it is. Truths and lies are different to everyone, but that’s not the point. There’s only two sides of the coin here: either you’re dead or you’re alive. When you’re name is at the Memorial Stone you’re are a truth: you’re are fucking dead. But if your name slip, if you vanish, if someone taps you in the shoulder and says “sorry, kid, wrong name” it turns into a lie, which means you are fucking alive. That’s how much your name vanishing means. It sounds pathetic, but desperation will always and forever make you look piteous - which is just another word for paltry.) _

He wouldn't scratch them, he wouldn’t grow claws and rip them away, and smile because it wasn't true — it was a fake grave and, actually, none of this names where supposed to be there. It was just a joke, a prank — one out of a thousand. None of them were dead. Bring the champanhe in.

It did fucking worked with Obito, right? 

He went there _ everyday _ and then the bastard wasn’t dead. He was batshit insane and wanted to destroy the whole world, that’s true, but he was _ alive_. That was all that mattered. He popped out of nowhere, mask ruined, shared vision and Kakashi was so, so angry and he loathed himself in so many ways but he fucker was alive and Heaven or something heard his unspoken prays and brought the man back — insane, twisted, filled with anger, malice and read to destroy all living forms, but Kakashi could swallow his tears and _ thank you, thank you, danke, gracias, merci, arigato, fuck_. 

Why not now? 

_ (Because Obito died again, after all.) _

Even — and hence — after all he's done in The War, (in the end of it, when he actually did help) some wanted his name removed from the stone. Kakashi stood adamant. If they erased — do you erase something whittled in stone? — he'd just pick a fucking hammer, a kunai, a knife, a wooden stick, anything, and put his name there again. He would crave it, kanji after kanji, until _ Obito Uchiha _was there again. 

But when people refuse to, when they declared _ him _unworthy Kakashi did it, didn't he? Craved the damn signs where they belonged. Another Uchiha no one wanted in there. But, Hokage or not, he did if by himself. He felt that was the minimum he could do. It took almost a whole day. Craving words wasn't easy. Craving knives in flesh is. He couldn’t banish the thought the whole day. 

(His father's name, wasn't at the cenotaph either. They thought, indeed, that the name didn't belong there — he did, indeed, indeed, killed himself, he didn't die in the action, he died due it, so — but, the consensus was that it didn't belonged nowhere. The name wasn't carved in any stone; he was buried as a disgrace, outside of town, south of the gates. There wasn't anything but a pile, a small mount of dirt. His father's name was nowhere to be seen. He would make sure to crave it with a tanto if that was necessary.

He couldn’t find his mother’s grave, as well. After his father died, he didn’t visit neither of them. Kakashi decided to visit his mother when he became sensei. It was 20 years later. He never said a properly goodbye to his mother. Maybe that’s why he kept coming here. Just one, one, has to forgive him. _ Minato-sensei, Kushina, Itachi _— please)

He stared at the cenotaph and it stared back at him. 

_ ("He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster. And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you." It was what Nietzsche said, he read it once. When does one’s humanity ends and it’s monstrosity begans? Shinobi forgot.) _

The sixth day of the the week, (undermentioned) the twenty-fourth day of the month. 

People love fridays: that means booze, getting shit faced, ignoring responsibilities, sleeping ‘till noon, going to bed at 5 AM, partying hard, unattached sex, one night only, using pills (they rely on painkillers, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t lowkey junkies among ninja), party rock, jump into pools, have the time of your life — things Jiraiya wrote here and there. Civilian’s lives and weekends.

But not for Kakashi. Not for shinobi. There ain’t no festivities and weekends. There’s alcohol and sex, sweat, dirty talk, fogged windows, pills make you get hasty, make you stand for at least 15 hours without breaking a sweat of tiredness, hypersensitivity to touch, doing what’s in hand to decrease the sensitivity to pain, relax the muscles, sleeping late and going to bed with the sun rising — but they’re covered in blood during all of this.¹ 

There - _ there _

was friday.

It is _ funny _that when it happened he didn’t know it was a friday. When you are covered in blood, fighting for other’s lives (because you don’t fight by yours, don’t even try to comes with this lie), when you see how blood looks when the sun is up and when it is down and you don’t know its proper colour anymore, you don’t really know how the enemy looks anymore because they are just covered as you; when you are jumping in front of fire to give it more time to medic nin to save a life, when you are carrying someone over your shoulder, when you took your last soldier pill, you don’t know it’s friday.

But when you have the time to mourn, you know. And that should be pathetic, because life and death aren’t about calendars. 

When the Fourth Great Ninja War was declared at the Kage Summit, Obito didn’t state “Evening, ladies and gentleman, today, Thursday, eight PM, a war begins.” No, war just takes place and takes lives away. That simple - that painful.

When Madara came back, he didn’t know which day it was. When Neji died, Naruto didn’t mark in his calendar if it was a Sunday. When hell broke loose, again, when Akatsuki took their sleep again, no one was taking notes. When his blood froze at the sight of Sakura splashed, not moving; when they found the bodies, then hawks knock at your window, when they rescue more ANBU masks then their bodies, when Hiddan tried to rip his heart off (again), when the wannabe new Akatsuki came back, when he flushed her pills, when the camp exploded — not one of then was marking the days.

They didn’t even know when it was Christmas for the past two years. It is pathetic, Kakashi.

Even though, he knew it was friday — the third of the month. 

There were so many other kanji he visited everyday, but today he went there to speak with them, just the two of them. He wasn’t alone for the first two hours, but the rain washed away the traces of smell. (She placed her hands in his shoulder, told him she was going to pack and ruffled his hair. Deep in his soul, he smiled). He was alone now, his fingers touching the names. They were so different, in life and in death, written there, even side by side. 

One was neat, perfect, sculpted with such a delicacy that it was a crime that this handjob was a name of a deceased. The person that craved it, knew what was doing. (Maybe he was the one that carved the Hokage’s faces? That’s probably arrogance by thinking that there’s only one civilian that’s able to do such, as if they have expertise only. One fisherman, one baker, one street market — while there are dozens of shinobis with fire style jutsus. 

It’s not everyday you have a new Hokage, but everyday you have a new death.) This person had done it before. The pattern was just like all the others. It was like the name belonged there. (It fucking didn't). He gained his acknowledgment in life and now had praises in death. 

The other name was completely messy. It was barely readable. It was a slouch, distorted, asymmetrical, totally not perfectly aligned, not like someone knew what was doing. It was done in a desperate attempt by calloused hands, by someone that managed some fucking way on how to crave it on the stone. 

It wasn't raining anymore for quite a while, wasn’t it? The stone was already dry. (he must be fucking freezing, scantily-clad beneath the clear night sky, and don't stop in the winter, no. And they said it changes when the sun goes down, around here. It doesn’t. His clothes were less soaked, but ice cold. Just like South where he would bleed and die to save other’s lives from being written by their side.) There was a breeze that played with the soggy hair and blew the leaves of a nearby tree at it and at the marble (shit) stone. It was an apple tree.

He looked at Obito's name. It was smoothly craved too. 

With a last look, he held timidly his hand and barely waved. 

“Bye, boys. See you tomorrow.” His voice was strangled and his throat and mouth dry — 

_ he was thirsty _

He reach for the canteen in his pocket — empty. It was a Sasuke’s gift. ‘Till the day of his death he would wonder if Sasuke hit his head or was compelled by a death threat, but the thing is he gave him a gift at Christmas. It belonged at an Uchiha, the clan signature was there. It has been almost ten years, but Kakashi never understood why Sasuke gave it to him. (He had the courage to pick it just yesterday, as they were to leave tomorrow. If felt too heavy in his pocket. He decided to leave it at his safe box. Sasuke was too heavy, just as Itachi was. He wondered, not for the first time, if Itachi would ever come back —

It could've been poetic. It wasn't. There was nothing poetic in death and, even less, in those that were left behind. _ Those you love never die, as long as you never stopped loving them, they would live in your heart, through you. _Bullshit. Those you love die and it hurts like hell. Not-poetically he swallowed hard and walked away. 

The stone was wet with his fingerprints — it was that kind of wetness that fogs your mirror after a hot shower; it was almost delicate. Three fingers caressed the rude, rough, yet slim kanji; caressed the dead, as if tucking their hair behind their ear, moving it from their faces; like the deliberated care you have handling something that might break and fall apart if you ran your fingers roughly. Death isn’t fragile; 

_ (Bless you friday and how fucking special your are. Fuck you friday and how vertiginous sore you are.) _

Everything was wet today, and not just because of the rain. His face was wet beneath the mask, was it from the drinks or from the tears. Just soaked, dripping, wet. 

Not the good kind of wet, that soaks your panties, that makes you rub your thighs to release some of tightness in your low abdomen when you can’t soak your fingers, not that wet after the summer rain you dance under, not the wet rain Itachi used to cry or the one you used to smile at when you were young with hot cocoa in your small hands, no bathtub wet. 

_ Bitter _wet. 

There are things that simply don't belong — the names didn't belong to the cenotaph, just as much peace don't belong in a war. These words didn't belong there. 

And, there, at the meticulously carved stone like an artist, like a sculptor turned white stone into an angel, a man, a rat, anything he wanted. It was like an artist put the words there, shining, glowing, glowing so hard it should make him blind — if he was blind, he would never ever again see the light leaving someone's eyes. There, at this twisted piece of art, were the words, side by side. Just as they died, side by side. They could've been holding hands. 

It didn't belong there. God forbidden.

The moon shone and they waved back from the bodiless graveyard.

_ Naruto Uzumaki Sasuke Uchiha _

* * *

"See you later, sensei." A man whispered in a rich voice just a low branch away. Kakashi was already too far to hear it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (Just in case you didn't catch, someone is alive, you know, Naruto or Sasuke. That's why someone said oh k see ya sensei etc. don't know. just wanted to say it)  



	4. My Brain is Hanging Upside Down (CID 10 R 45)

cope 

kōp/

_verb_

gerund or present participle: **coping**

(of a person) deal effectively with something difficult.

"his ability to **cope with** stress"

_similiar: manage; survive; subsist;_

_(psychology)_ the process of managing taxing circumstances, expending effort to solve personal and interpersonal problems, and seeking to master, minimize, reduce or tolerate stress or conflict.

* * *

_May 3009, 2 years before the beginning of the 4th Great Ninja War_

“She can't go.”

IT WAS SAID IN such a deadpanned tone it sounded like introducing yourself for the tenth time at the day, at the same time it sounded like a take out deal when you shift just ended – deprived of life, settled and unarguable. The tone itself was enough to raise both Tsunade’s eyebrows even before it was conscious to her.

Kakashi was standing in the middle of her office, his hands on his pockets, with a look in his face that made him look bored with a characteristic sleepiness in his eye, as if he was ordering a coffee just for the sake of doing something to get out of boredom. 

(In his defense, he booked an appointment, got only two and a half hours late, knocked on the door, bowed and then spoke. Not much, but it is something.)

He was ordering her around giving her the look you give your wall when you run out of things to do – like she was something between a caterpillar and a grocery store’s shelf.

Tsunade lifted her eyes from the paperwork _she_ was giving a bored look and looked at him like he had forbidden for life sake production. A bigot could fall over his head and she’d be pretty much pleased right now.

“Excuse me?"

He kept his gaze low – when you eye a really small child that just started crying, but you know you can still get away with it, so you don’t even bother before turning your back – and spoke like she was a child – not a crying one; just an annoying one – that had asked him the same question ten times.

“Sakura. She can't go." He stated. And that’s all.

“What are you talking about?" A thunder roared in the back of her mind and she wondered if it was the itch to break the table in two or the start of a very nasty headache.

He just said: "Sakura." 

"Sakura Haruno."

"Sakura Haruno."

"Sakura, my apprentice?"

"Sakura, your apprentice."

Jesus fuck.

"Hatake, I may have not seen much of you in action, but I know how you got your nickname. You don't need to keep repeating everything I say."

He just stood there staring at her, his bored expression betrayed nothing, hands on his pockets, one eye behind that fucking Hitai-ate and he could be fucking sleeping for all she was concerned. The man was a fucking nightmare. 

He just stood there. She just considered how harmful with would be to the village to snap his neck – financially speaking, the rest is another demerit for another time.

Dead air only.

It only lasted about two seconds before she started yelling.

"Hatake, I don't have all day. That was your fucking cue to speak."

She threw the pen she was using to blindly sign her papers into the table causing a little crack in it that didn’t go unnoticed by him, but the word was true that he had a deathwish, then. She was annoyed – and annoyed was just a sneeze from angry and angry is never good.

"Sakura can't go in this mission." Kakashi said like he was saying "sit" to a dog.

She got angry.

"You do realise you're talking to your Hokage, right, you brat?"

"Yes." Kakashi said simply, on the verge of indifference but and she arched a brow.

“Lady Tsunade.” he added with a bow. The woman didn’t blink. He tried again and she arched it even further – he bowed further.

“Lady Hokage.” it shouldn't be physically possible to arch even more, but yet she did.

“Lady Hokage?" again – and his chin was touching his chest almost.

She seemed to be having fucking fun with him not being fucking able to know how to refer to his own leader. He indeed needed to get out a bit more not just for killing. Tsunade her hands on the table and leaned her chin on it, brow still arched, the evil shadow of a smile.

"Lady Hokage Tsunade?" 

Nothing. 

Ok, the woman can hold a stare. Kakashi was growing self conscious. Were they playing a "stare to death” contest? Did he really offended her that much? 

"Huh, Lad-"

"Sit, Hatake"

He threw himself in the chair in the most respectful way he could. Yet, he sat on it as if it was his armchair and he was about to open his dirty books or just a cooking book and put his beautiful feet on the living room table, his ankles crossed and a hot mug of tea resting beside.

“Take that fucking smug look off of your face.” at that his visible eye widened and Tsunade smiled to herself behind one pigtail that fell on her face when she downed to open the device at the middle of the table.

She liked to lie to herself that she had her “Special Occasion Drinks” but that was bullshit. It was just some expensive shit in some hardly different spot just as a disguise for others and for herself. It was an everyday thing.

When Naruto found her in that shithole with was supposed to be a Special Occasion, because Orochimaru crossed her path, bleeded in front of her, promised her Dan and her little brother back. It was just alcohol. She could lie all she wanted, but it was just an addiction anyway.

And she knew Hatake knew – he suffered the same, even though it seemed it would take him some years to realise his trips to the bar would become more and more frequent and he would realise way too late. And there’s nothing worse than too late.

_(Years later, he told her that a poet named Bukowski once wrote that _

"_there are worse things_

_than being alone_

_but it often takes_

_decades to realize this_

_and most often when you do_

_it's too late_

_and there's nothing worse_

_than too late”_

_And the drunk womanizer – was it Kakashi or Bukowski who could tell – was goddamn right. And that's fucking sad.)_

With her not-so-special bottle she picked one not-so-special cup and watched as his posture changed. Men aren’t used to women in power. Hatake was one of those and, honestly, she couldn’t blame him. He wasn’t used to woman like her, even though he had Anko as an acquaintance. And doubting Sakura was more than expected. She would be disappointed if he really trusted her to be a good shinobi. The girl was a fucking disaster, caring more about her hair and the Uchiha boy than dodging kunais. But that girl fled the village among the annoying piece of “_avenger_.”

She filled her glass five times and by the sixth, he was wondering if her way of punishing him would be to watch her drink herself unconscious and them throw up on him? Hum, he should've thought about this way of punishment before. Those three annoying ass brats would’ve think twice before they – oh, the brats. That's why he was there. 

The brats. 

He cleared his throat, eyed the bottle, eyed the woman, eyed the distance to the window and to the door as much as he could without moving his head and was about to speak when she pointed a finger at him. 

“I won't allow this kind of behaviour. The Third was very complacent in a lot of ways I'm not.” she put the bottle on middle of the table, her glass with it.

The truth is, it is very hard to count how many cups it takes to end a bottle. Bottles don’t come with “You can’t swipe me on six glasses, watch out!”. People just guess or are just really used to it. This bottle was one of 750 ml. By his experience it would take six glasses of wine, five tall glasses of water, eight cups of sake and you can down it without any glasses in a record time of ten to twelve minutes without getting really nauseous or obstructing your nasal way by covering your mouth for too long. So he had two cups of sake. 

Kakashi hold her gaze because looking away seemed the wrong thing to do. 

It was like she was daring him to drink it and he couldn’t read in between the lines on why she would want it. So he just fucking did anyway. Free booze from the Hokage.

He took it in his gloved fingers, filling the cup to the top and seeing his calculations failed him by little – he had a little bit more than one cup left – and didn't wait for an order. Strong shit. It hit the back of his throat in a burning way that left a hot sensation and some part of him thanked the woman. Though, special thanks wouldn’t take a place by the way she was looking at him and if her fame made her justice, he better just drink himself numb before she smashed him. 

He didn't fill it again. 

“She can't go.” it came out smoother, not an order anymore, but not pleading neither.

Not treating her like a subordinate, but not understanding she was the Hokage.

Tsunade rose from her seat and grabbed two other bottles and placed them on the table, putting the first bottle and the first cup aside and replacing the latter with two water glasses.

“Pick one.”

Her voice wasn’t harsh nor soft. It was a command, but as much rigid you talk to a bird escaping its cage. Kakashi pointed to the one adorned with blue patterns. She opened the other one.

Men like him don’t understand how it is to women like her to live in this world. It is an ugly world. It is such a wilderness. Every second you’re caught under life and death and not just yours. Your decisions can cost your life or others. It is not just about training, just about being good. It is about _knowing_. And knowledge doesn’t come in a textbook.

She filled both glasses and sat again. The lift of one eyebrow was all she gave as a stimulus.

“She can't go” he repeated, repeated repeated _repeated _(as he did in the mirror, convincing himself he had to say it, that the girl needed someone to point that out, that he needed to save her life, that she was useless and weak and he was strong and had to protect her because that’s what he does: protect, because he is _so _good at it) punctuating the words, with all respect he could put on them. “Lady Hokage” He finished, with a bow and a sip.

“Two questions for you, boy. One: Why? And two: What makes you think you can order me around?” it was simple and it was like acid corroding wood, not iron. It was faster and the effect was far more devastating.

Tsunade was much more then they all took her for, he himself included. Two sentences and she suffocated him. He always heard the whispers. Voices echoing that he was a man of few words, but they always had great impact. Tsunade said _nothing_, really nothing, but that was like a punch on the gut. Maybe it was the alcohol, maybe it was her eyes, maybe it was the fact that he realised he walked into the Hokage’s office – fuck.

“With all due respect” too late for that, fucker “I apologize for my behavior” he sighed the slightest and propped himself up properly in the chair “but she can't go.”

“Either you suck at arguments or I am missing something.” Folic acid. “Why is that?”  
Acetylsalicylic acid.

2/3 of the bottle was gone already. He didn’t notice.

“She won't be able to take it.” She is weak.

“Hum.” Hydrochloridric acid. “What makes you think that?" Nitric acid.

“I was her sensei.” she opened the blue bottle. It was dripping phosphoric acid all over the table. She poured them both. Why was he afraid of drinking he couldn’t tell. Was she drugging him?

“I am pretty much aware.” the words behind her cup and down her tongue tasted like acetic acid, the one you use to remove nail polish just like the one she had on her hand. Did Sakura used nail polish at all. He drank and it tasted like poison, like snakes. Like _hemlock_ – a poison that came from a flower, it paralyzes you and you stop breathing.

_(Many years ahead he would mistake Sakura's from hemlocks and think that maybe they mistaken her birth name, cause he could feel that was the death he was facing in between her breasts, one deep breath among the other. He couldn’t move away from her, even when it burned traces amid, constricting, asphyxiating, choking_ _– as he did more than once with an enemy and more than twice with a lover – like a moth is drawn to the flame _ _and if he had the guts to he’d ask to be buried surrounded by hemlocks, sakuras and fire, ‘_c_ause that was all he felt since that first sip on blue acid on that tower a lifetime ago.)_

Kakashi had many things to say about Sakura but when he was faced with the indifference bordering despise of the Hokage it seemed his words glued to his palate. One more sip, one less teeth, one more nail.

“She… She can’t handle this. Not these kind of stuff. She’s not a good ninja.” he said in a hurry, the words fighting to be on top of each other and he was getting drunk and so was she and she was explosive and strong and he was suicidal and careless.

She held her cup, closing one of her eyes, aiming. When she threw it, he dodged. When she threw a paper clip, he caught with his hand. When she threw a small book – about orange cakes – he caught again and placed on the table. Bottle – dodge; scroll – catch; fucking kunai with a paper bomb (not a strong one, at least) – dodge (poor wall); case – catch; ink case – catch; when it came to the chair, he had to raise and his chair took the blow and now there was two broken chairs. However, she laughed.

Turning her back to him and leaning on her desk, she rolled the cup on her hand as she spoke and she was all lysergic acid – (6aR,9R)- N,N- diethyl- 7-methyl- 4,6,6a,7,8,9- hexahydro indolo- [4,3-fg] quinoline- 9-carboxamide¹.

“During the Second War you were a toddler, too small to comprehend but already too smart to miss the seriousness of the magnitude unraveling under your small feet. Do you remember your mother?” And that was it.

_Fluoroantimonic._

The strongest of acids. It’s a mix whose acidity surpasses the highest found in nature: 100% sulfuric acid. The mixture of hydrofluoric and antimony pentafluoride is considered the strongest among superacids and was created to react with materials that others cannot handle. However it is not able to corrode everything - since corrosion does not depend on strength. One thing, nevertheless, is certain:

when corrosion occurs, the damage is irreversible.

He filled his cup to the top, spilling drops – fucking melt the fucking table he doesn’t care – and the alcohol burned him and he wished his curp burned her as well.

“No.”

“Hum.”

And they fell in silence.

It was almost midday.

Men like Kakashi don’t know what to do with women in power and Tsunade doesn’t know what to do with an orphan traumatized by war that by a miracle didn’t turned into a sociopath. Or she knew exactly what she was doing. Maybe it was a gamble. Maybe she was drunk.

“Enemies have a tendency to name the surviving, like is their duty, like they can, like they _own _it. Hanzo named me, Jiraya and Orochimaru _(oxyuranus microlepidotus; _bitter, bitter_)_ the Three Legendary Sannin. And that’s how the world sees us. Legendary. With our summons, with our power, with our past. Flee on sight. We’re legends!” Despite the cheer the word cared, the seven letters were sour like a dying lemon over your grilled fish.

She turned around to look to him and he didn’t know if that was a tear on her eye or the sun making myriads. She was drunk and so was he. She pointed with her chin and he grabbed another bottle, a smaller one. With her chin, again, she invited him to sit aside her on the table, looking at the city. He filled his glass and she said in a hurry _drink it up, drink it up, boy_ and he did. As soon as he finished, she threw both cups out of the window, the glass shattering in the light a beautiful view. The remainings of liquid not enough to form any rainbow, but undoing is a form of breeding and the splintered, shattered pane window on the carpet looked more like melody than acid, for once.

“I didn’t want to be legendary. Nor Hokage. I wanted to be a drunk gambler.” she took a swing from the bottle and passed it to him. “Your father deserved his title, however.” Tsunade was facing her grandfather, the God of Shinobi 0.1 and his brother; Sarutobi Hiruzen, the God of Shinobi 0.2; his sensei; and herself. “You know, he was adored. I admired him. So much. He was up to be Hokage.” at that, Kakashi swallowed harder, the beverage was stronger, the subject was hell, her words sting in various parts he didn’t know could sting. Wide-eyed, he didn’t turn to her, but stared to her face in the mountain, as if the stone could give him the answer to all the question he had yet to formulate. “The White Fang of the Leaf.”

She didn’t say anything else. They just kept exchanging the bottle, until it was over. They were drunk. Her cheeks were rose and so was his. Both were tipsy and they had the whole day to face. Two remaining chairs in the office, opposite to one another, and the lighter was thrown between them, the light smoke of the cigarette dancing in the sun.

“Do you know how old Sakura is now?”

He didn’t mind the change of the subject.

“No.”

“There is a bottle at your right, a small one, the liquid is a bit brownish. It’s yous. At your left there’s another one. Hand me that.”

They had no cups anymore and they were drunk.

The alcohol still worked.

“She’s not fifteen.” He didn’t look up. He knew what she meant. _At fifteen you were an ANBU captain. You killed more cruelly then I got drunk in the past two years as Hokage. _“She can fucking handle this. She did already.” He barely lifted his head when he asked.

“How did I never known about it?”

“Classified.”

“A mission like _this_ classified?”

“You’re ANBU, brat, not the King of the fucking World.”

He just drank. Fuck Sakura then. Let her sleep with whoever the Hokage wanted her to. He had no obligation there.

Tsunade’s words weren’t acid anymore. It was just rage, but it wasn’t the stupid explosive rage everyone took her for – an unstable woman. No. She was fucking cruel when she wanted to be.

And she was succeeding.

He knew what she was going to say next before she lifted her eyes to bore into his that were already staring into hers – not defiance, no boredom, no indifference. He wasn’t an open book, but somehow a loyal soldier, but still one that stood his ground, even if it cost his head. He still cared about Sakura. He promised everything would be okay and he wasn’t about to let some dirt old fuck lay his hands on her just for the sake of the mission.

People die because of blindness of following strict rules. And she wasn’t dying either getting hurt. She was his responsibility.

_(you are forever responsible for what you have tamed, said a little prince)_

“No.”

“No _what_?” Tsunade was acid no more. She was corrosive at the moment.

Corrosive substances pose serious risks to people's health, including damage to the eyes, skin and other tissues, and inhalation or ingestion may affect the respiratory tract or gastrointestinal tract. _Chemical burns are often fatal._

One of the methods that can be applied in the field to reduce hazards is to neutralize the spilled product. This technique consists of adding a chemical – _drink the pain away, Kakashi._

“Sakura.”

“Sakura _what_, Hatake?!”

They say pregnant woman “glow” (Sakura late told him that the idea that pregnant women experience a “pregnancy glow” is real. The “glow” comes from an increase in blood volume, estrogen, and progesterone. More blood flow to the skin gives a rosy appearance, and makes the face appear fuller as well. It still freaks the shit out of him.), but he was sure Tsunade was glowing on pure chakra resonating out of her.

“Sakura can’t go. I already lost too many to allow –” he was cut shortly when the bottle reached the wall milliliters behind where his face was and he was kinda sure that could be fatal.

“_You _can not allow? _You, Hatake? _You never gave a fuck about her!”

“That’s n–”

“Shut your fucking mouth before I rip off your tongue!” she threw the chair out of the window.

A woman with a brown hair and a pig started opening the door and – “Shizune, get the fuck outta here!” – was welcome with this. “Hatake, you… you… You piece of shit! You march into my office to _order _me to cut off a mission because you think you can, uh?” a vein on her forehead was pulsing. She was a warrior. “You are a fucking legendary battlefield asshole, jack head with your nicknames, but guess the fuck what? _I am your boss, your HOKAGE and if I fucking tell you to jump the only thing you say is h o w – h i g h_.”

She was pacing the office, throwing the things off of her table and she looked like a puma concolor in a human body, in all its rage for losing its prey, its job for the neighbor next door and decide to tear some of the wild life, furniture to ease the adrenaline. One wrong step and you’re the next. The thing is, Kakashi wasn’t afraid of dying.

“Where were you?” he said, not in his bored, detached tone, but just brazenness.

“What?” higher pitch. Mortal feline, pray not noticing boundaries.

“Where were you when Naruto needed you?”

“How dare you–” 

“I bet my lung, kidneys, my fucking whole life you knew how he was. _Everyone knew.” He is your blood_, he should've said.

Her brain was screaming, tearing him aparting, but she lost her voice. She wanted to kill him, but he was saving her the trouble and killing them both in one blow.

“You just said: you wanted to be a drunk gambler. Where the fuck were you?”

“I am your Hok–”

“My Hokage, yeah, I got that part the day you came into the village.” he bowed, mocking, insane. “It doesn’t take the burden out of your shoulders. Nor Jiraya’s. Neither from Hiruzen.”

“You can’t call him like that, you twisted fuck ass dick –” 

“I FUCKING CAN! I WAS THE ONE HERE! The one that saw him grow up alone and miserable, the parents never letting their kids even _look_ at him. And the “God of Shinobi” never let me even _talk_ to the kid. I did it anyway because he was a child and all of you let them all treat him be treated like a monster. You washed your hands and walked away. All of you. You ran –”

His breath was cut short from his lungs.

Tsunade was known for her inhuman strength, for her temperament, drinking habit and gambling addiction. She was showing none of those in that moment. She didn’t punch him through the wall. She didn’t throw a chair or a table at his direction. Her face was flushed and her pigtails were loose, some of her hair sticking to her temple, her breath hasty, her eyes hatched, her anger in tears – her five fingers imprinted in his cheek.

She slapped him across the cheek instead of doing all she usually would do. That meant she wasn’t acid anymore. She was a perfect _Latrodectus_, the black widow, out of the pH in the blood straight to the animalea – a painful bite that is fatal in rare cases. The venom is seldom fatal to healthy humans (_he wasn’t one. It would sting and bruise, but it wouldn’t kill. Dying isn’t always a punition. She knew it way too well when her hands were covered in blood but hearts were no longer bumping it.)_ These spiders, they eat and kill you after they fuck you. Tsunade wasn’t taking Kakashi to bed, but he could feel the hairs of his neck raising up. She hit a black spot that hurt like hell, he did the same. They were both in dangerous territory, but she had the upper hand.

His cheek burned like the sun touched it for too long, however he couldn’t help but smile.

“You never ever again dare to talk to me like that, you piece of shit of a brat.” her words were low, but her pupils were dilated and he tasted the tears in her voice. They both knew he was right. She left Naruto.

Even being much shorter her eyes were even with his, honey dripping on still, sweeten much to the point of nauseating.

“You know you can kill me, but it won’t cease to be true.” He could taste the blood on his mouth already. She grabbed him by his shirt and leveled their faces.

“You know nothing, boy.”

Her grip was much too strong and the day wasn’t playing as it should. He never thought he would end up in this position, almost kneeling to be on her eye level after yelling on her face how much she failed of one the purest person he ever crossed paths with and left him to rot in misery. He never thought he’d voice it, much less to face, much less today, much less on Sakura’s behavior.

The day seemed to pass and a whole year seemed to grow while their eyes locked in one another before she let him go – he kept his eyes down and she kept her mouth full. They didn’t move. He grabbed his bottle and finished its content and so did she. They froze in space, minds too far to share. If time really passed they didn’t noticed and they didn’t care. Why be in such a hurry if the destiny is death?

His mouth was dry when he gathered his thoughts and tried for the very last time. He didn’t know why he was still trying. If it was really worth.

“Sakur–” 

“Your father, Hatake.” a cannonball, straight to his guts. The alcohol burned all his organs. “He was something.” shut up. “He would’ve been…” her voice seemed to care affection and longing. Shut up. “But, the sad part is about your... mother” Kakashi’s grip on the bottle made it shatter, but if she heard the glass exploding she didn’t give a fuck as she didn’t turn around. Shut up. “It’s a pity you don’t remember your mother, though. She was much like Sakura.” Shut up, shut it shut it shut it _just shut it _

_“Shut up” w_as it a whisper or not, he didn’t care anymore. You can’t poke someone with hot iron and not expect them to hiss.

The vixen (he was seeing double) turned around, glee and mischief (she was concerned) in her eyes, as if his pain was a parade (no, Kakashi). “What?” her voice was mocking him (she wasn't).²

“Don’t talk about her.”

“Why not?”

“Just don’t.”

“I am trying to explain to you why Sakura can and should go –”

“If that’s your fucking brilliance than you’re just making it all worse.”

She showed her backstory, then. Tsunade slapped her hand so hard in the table it crashed in multiple parts, bringing it all to the floor.

“How the fuck” one step closer. “dare you” two steps closer. “keep talking to me” three steps closer. “like that?” and she was almost in his personal space.

He was snarling.

This was a lost battle and he lost his mind long ago.

“I fucking know how and where she died” one step closer. “and you are trying to convince me” two steps closer. “that it’s save for Sakura to go and face” into her personal space. “the _same destiny?” _

He was doomed. This is Armageddon.

Kakashi could swear the Slug Princess opened her mouth to speak about his father again and he was pretty sure he was about to yell to her never to talk about him ever again, but her fist met some part of him and the last thing he saw was a trait of blue sky with a gray cloud and soft tears of rain.

* * *

Mission Report **#1344634**

Mission **#544002**

1st pt of the document

Team Leader: _Naruto Uzumaki_

Support Team: _Shikamaru Nara, Konohamaru Sarutobi and Tenten_

Nature of the Mission: _scroll delivery_

Nature of the Secrecy: **Low** (_not classified)_

Nature of the Document: _full report of the mission in the field perspective_

Date: _02.08.10_

Place of Delivery: _Kazekage Tower – Sand Country, Center Village_|_41.40338, 2.17403. _

Status of the Mission: _completed_

Mission full status: **Successful **

2nd pt of document

Description

The mission started at 9:00 AM in the Wednesday, 30.07.10. We met at the gates and travelled in foot for about 3 miles before taking off to the trees. The mission was about to be simple.

  * Shikamaru Nara was responsible for the strategy;
  * Tenten would take of the long distance security;
  * Konohamaru's goal in the mission was training and perfectionin two of Naruto's signature jutsus;
  * Naruto Uzumaki was the team leader whose role was to lead them safely to the destination. In second hand, he was there to train Konohamaru.

The simplicity of the mission allowed them to take only necessary precautions.

Shikamaru was bored, but took it as "annoying and troublesome vacation", but kept his role seriously and nothing out of the plan happened. The strategy worked perfectly and no obstacles were found on the way on the first day.

Tenten was testing her new weapons, aiming at them at her fellows as so to “keep the ninja in them alive enough” just for them to dodge and keep alert. Konohamaru was there just for the sake of and to train his jutsus. He needed a B-rank mission, for the experience and for his curriculum, bur also behaved according as demanded. Not having much time in the Village the mission seemed a good plan for him to take for the reason above mentioned and train his not officially sensei – Naruto. As for being the Team Leader (me), no problems were reported – ye.

The route was to follow through the deep brushes, with the aim to keep a low profile, not being in a hurry and keeping more in the lower branches than the the top ones. The camp was set about 0000 and moved about 0700.

Sarutobi and Uzumaki kept alternating between Sexy Jutsu and the Rasegan.

(Here the handwriting goals from neat to complete stretches)

Man, we tried to merge both, but it was a complete disaster and I though Shikamaru would never release me from his jutsu, but it was nice to see him laugh so much. Even if the bastard was laughing because I had breasts, but burned my pants. Well, days and days.

By the way, Shikamaru took, like, two weeks to plan his revenge. Sasuke should take notes.

Back to the joint of the perfect jutsus again ‘cause we ain’t no quitters, Tenten got really angry 'cause we kinda lost control of it and Konohamaru was glowing in blue and, well, he kinda looked like Neji (which was NOT our idea. I guess he was aiming to look like Hinata but I really don't know what happened). When we stopped for the night, they made Konohamaru be on watch the whole night because he was still glowing, so he was used as the fire. It was really hot already so no one needed a fire. He was just fucking glowing. He aimed a Harem at me, but I didn’t fall for it. Not completely. Just a bit. But the student didn’t surpass the master. (Sakura said that to Granny once and I think she ended in the hospital, but that was a nasty, nasty fight and I didn’t talk to neither of them for like three weeks. They destroyed half of the Village and they are like mother and child. Imagine what they would do to me! I always get on their nerves! I would probably lose an arm. Just thinking about it gives me goosebumps.)

The next day we were already very close and Konohamaru tried again on the Harem, but, well… he got the Reverse Sexy Jutsu, Tenten got, uh, a nosebleed. So we asked Shikamaru to stop the weapons with his shadows and he said "fuck off!!!!" *I'm just quoting. And I added a lot of !!! because I think he meant with much intensity, ya’ know.

Anyway, she tried to kill us, I swear, but we promised to cook dinner and she forgave us. I don't know how, cause it was like what 1500? And we just had had lunch! Then everyone says I am the one the eats too much. But she did the worst thing someone ever did to me: she said I couldn't have ramen!! This should be a crime, Granny. Oh, shit. I can't erase it with this ink. Oh, um, sorry?? Shouldn’t call you Granny, huh? (Please, don’t kill me.)

this isn't going to archive forever, neh?

(Wait, I called you Granny already.

Please, don’t rip my arm off. Or my eye. I am sorry. You look amazing. I would never say you are 70, I swear.)

Back to the mission, haha!

Shikamaru told us that if we kept being so loud the enemy would find us or a snake would eat us so for not stop talking. I would say it was that time in the month for his behavior (Sakura acts like that sometimes and I never even get close to her because she broke a lot of bones and there was that time she didn’t even fix it! I was still in love with her so I pretended it didn’t hurt, but it did. A lot). Oh, Shikamaru. Yeah, that time of the month from Shikamaru, but men don't really have 'times of the month'. Right? I never did. If we do, I think something is wrong with me. And I asked Konohamaru and Tenten said she had hers when she was eleven, so there is something wrong?

You diagnosed me as "just dumb" once, but maybe I need a check up. Oh crap crap I can't erase this!!! I meant I don't need a check up. Sakura is just mean and you scare me, granny. 

Oh, yeah, mission.

Wait

(Ramen's receipt)

Sorry 'bout that, but you see I'm having lunch at Ichiraku and he just gave me one of the secrets recipients 'cause I tracked Kakashi-sensei down, then I tricked him (can you imagine this? I think he was drunk) and I even manage to get some money of _his_ to pay what he debt! So he got me a free bowl! Kakashi-sensei is still mad at me. 

Wait, Kakashi is already the Hokage? Who is reading this report??? I would throw it away, but it took forever to convince Sakura to explain me how to do it and she even wrote the beginning for me. (That's why the handwriting is different. Mine is better)

Ye, the mission 

I began to write this a week ago, so I don’t remember much, so I will try.

Uh, well, we traveled nicely, Shikamaru looked more to the clouds than to us and I really wanna know how he never slips! Konohamaru was kinda of staring at, hum, Tenten's back. I thought she would shuriken away his eye, but I guess she played nice and pretended to have interest in him so she would make a fool out of him and scare him for life to never stare at women's raw again (Shikamaru explained this for me, because I was really confused on why she would like him and then just dislike him. Women are troublesome. Shikamaru knows what he's saying.) 

And, I don't mean to be mean, but, hu, Shikamaru took what two weeks to plan his revenge? Sasuke should take notes. (I feel I said this already, but I am not sure. Let's keep it a secret, but I actually stole this phrase. Sakura said it to Kakashi when we were drinking inside dad’s ear and I liked it, so I say it to people. I think Sakura hates Sasuke now, after he kept trying to kill her and then disappearing and things are getting dark again, Tsu. Are you afraid too?)

Well, Sasuke, that idiot. When I convince him to come back, I'll ask Shikamaru to help him. I don't want Sasuke to kill anyone, but he could at least have a plan. Even Pervy Sage knew what we were going to do in the training. 

Oh, did I ever told you that was Kakashi-sensei that taught me the Rasengan? He was my father's student!! Maybe that's why he liked me. Even though he seemed to like Sasuke the best. Do you think the Chidori is cooler than Rasengan? I beg to disagree (I heard someone saying this phrase and it looked very smart)

oh, ye, the revenge of Shikamaru. Did he ever filled the report of that mission? He is lazy, but that was just too cool to don't keep in history. And it was just perfect and I completely fried the weird five hearts dude (the one that was very ugly and quinnited himself with a bunch of hearts and what looked like ANBU masks. Oohhh, do you think he killed only ANBU to have their masks? And people say I am dumb) The other dude had a nice visual, but I really hate the guy. He could be funny if he wasn't an Akatsuki nuts. But his design was neat (Sakura told me this one. Not really sure of when use it, but I think is right)

and the mission!!

It lasted less than a week that shit, but I never finish. Now I know why you never ends your reports, sensei.

We camped for the night next to a river, so we could bath in the morning. Tenten threatened the three of us (even Shikamaru was scared of her) if we tried to peek while she was bathing. I bet Pervy Sage would find a way to. But that would be wrong, cause Pervy Sage is really old.

You're not that old, sensei.

Wait

Who the fuck is the Hokage again? Stop trading

Kakashi-sensei isn't the Hokage anymore! You woke up, Granny! I completely forgot. I know he was Hokage for like one day (they should've picked me) because we tried to bribe the man that craves the statues' face in the monument to show us Kakashi-sensei's face, but he said he managed to hide his face even for that. Did you know he and Bushy Brow Sensei made a bet and ran over the entire village? I think their friendship is really beautiful. Like InoShikaCho. They are best friends because their parents were best friends. Do you know who was my father's best friend? I wish he has a son so we can be friends like that. Your friendship with Pervy Sage was also amazing, Granny. It still hurts a lot to talk about him, but I know you loved him too. Because he loved you. He was in love with you. Like I was with Sakura. But I think Sakura likes someone else (not me nor Sasuke, the dumbass). When I return to take my first ANBU mission I want to –

(The handwriting chances to neaty again)

After the bath on the river, the Sand Country was finally at sight. The trip to the Kazekage Tower took less than six hours.

-

-

-

(The scroll was never finished. The village was attacked at that very moment. The sun was covered by paper - origami. A goddess has awoken. The scroll remained in Sakura’s pocket for ages.)


	5. Civil Wars: Poison and Wine (CID 10 F43.8)

**war**  
/wɔːr/ Is either die or get killed.  
Which you're going to do?  
It's a battle of nerves and the biggest loss is to claim to understand (which you're going to do?) why is this blood in is your hands and not yours in theirs,  
because, kid, only _the death_ have seen _the end_ of the  
war

* * *

_February 3013, 3 years after the beginning of the 4th Great Ninja War_

* * *

"Your hair."

"What?"

"Your hair." He coughed and wiped the blood from his mouth with his torn fingerless glove

"Your hair, it isn't short."

"Well, it happens when you let it grow and doesn't cut it." she raised an eyebrow and said it in a _no shit, Sherlock_ kind of way. She crouched in front of him and her fingers twitched to pull his mask down - she didn't.

After all this years, there was still that stupid bet in the air. The bet rose to a few thousand ryo, but she suspected highly that Genma and Iruka were fucking with her, because it is downright impossible to befriend the man for decades and don’t see his face. So she made her own bet with the Rookie 9 that 1. he had dimples 2. Genma saw it before Iruka; then her bet with the senseis that 1. Iruka saw his face before Genma did 2. he had prominent canines; her bet with Tsunade and Shizune was that 1 – well, actually, Tsunade refused to make a bet with her, until the first two bottles of sake, so Sakura waited for her to make the first move then gambled 1. he looked like an averaged guy and 2. he had dimples.

While she scanned his body there was a silence comfortable enough that as broken only by his hiss as she cleaned the nasty cut in his eyebrow with alcohol. It was sake, actually. Her hospital alcohol ran off days ago, so she regaled on the sake. The only question was where the fuck the sake came from? It wasn’t from her shisou once she knew every single brand Tsunade liked and disliked (but drank anyways) and this one had a foreign alphabet. She'd have to ask around and maybe scowl the owner for having alcohol out in the battlefield. She hadn't had her pills with her.

_(a lie. she had. not even close to half of her stock, maybe not even a quarter, but enough for a couple days. she was just rationalizing. hypocrite)_

She turned her thoughts out of her decay. Kakashi was a mess. He had first degree burns in his left arm and some spreading at his chest. There was blood in his hair, making it heavy and kinda less disheveled due the dampness of the dry blood, making it look almost black instead of crimson, as it should - his gray hair was still in sight, despite the blood, full with dirt and a feel tufts were also burnt. He looked like an odd sheep – not him, his hair.

He looked like a portrait of what a war looks like. Scarred yet cicatrized, soaked in blood, smelling of cover, iron, gore, cruor. His eyes were sharp like a falcon, always watching, not a single move was missed, even when his gaze seemed so unfocused like he was drifting off. She learnt years ago that most of the time despite his eyes being buried in his books he was watching everything like an eagle, not even a drop of water falling from a leaf escaping his eyes. He also looked tired, worn out. Traumatized, but that was buried so deep you can only catch a glance when his hands embed into someone’s chest – specially someone young and female – and then it is gone like a blow of wind.

He looked like a tiger ready to launch towards its prey. He looked like a wolf circling his next kill, playing with it for a single moment, giving it a breath of hope of escaping, thinking this game will last a few more seconds, thinking it will be able to break free with a distraction, just to be lacerated in a blink of an eye. Like a fox, a panther, a lion. A fucking crocodile – embedded in mud, hiding behind the moss, until it is too late and you lose your leg.

A bloody hippo – that shit is the most dangerous animal in the planet. And it is just like Kakashi. It looks cute if you look at it in a certain angle. When he gives you his eye crinkle, when he is eating without taking his mask off, when he peels oranges with all the patience in the world, when he doesn’t murder three annoying gennin, when he ruffles your hair, when he has a hell of an ass, when he rubs his necks and comes out with lies so, so bad you can’t help smiling you can’t imagine the murder machine he is – when you look at a hippo with his missing teeth, huge head and big belly you don’t imagine that thing would kill you brutally, that can crush, squelch you, rip you apart.

Sakura swallows and breaks free from her revelry.

"So is yours."

Her mouth is dry.

“What?" he parroted.

Like a _dog._

"Your hair is longer too." she wrinkled her nose.

Dogs are the men’s best friend, right? _thing twice. _Rabid dogs are responsible for the death of 25 thousand people around the world. You don’t want to be around a rabid dog when he wants to bite. Sakura heard how the Elders call Kakashi. She doesn’t have nor want to wonder why. "Even though... did you cut it your own?"

He barked a muffled laugh that died in seconds as he pressed his side - broken limbs (people tend to think only ribs break on the torso) and nearly a pierced lung. She had to go there once she is over here. The poison was almost out of his deep cut in his silver - was it still silver? there was way too much blood to tell - eyebrow. She furrowed her pink – not so pink no more. She had her own scars now too – browns a bit. He'd up to have a new scar.

"It was falling all over my eyes, and, well, I've been out for a while, but I still think that fashion wouldn't appreciate how it looked like." even in pain he was in a slouched pose that _had_ to hurt.

"So you cut it yourself with a kunai?"

He lifted one finger, breathing hard with his pierced left lung, and told her in his best sensei voice. “It was a tanto.”

“It still looks like shit.” she offered sweetly.

He just shrugged lightly, not wanting to move too much, but she saw his mask contort into a smile.

“I bet five ryo that being in that lazy lag hurts.” she closed her eyes and worked her way through his chakra pathways again with more precision this time. His lungs were beginning to receive blood and that would be fatal if she lost a single second.

“Years of practicing.”

She couldn’t deny. The man sat at the base of the tree like he owned it, like it was his couch.

A small twitch of her lips and she opened one eye with mirth dancing in it, but closed it just as fast as it could've never been open in first place – he was watching her intently.

Silence fell upon them.

She had her eyes closed thigh, brow furrowed in concentration and the tiredness was wearing down his body plus her chakra was just like chamomile tea with honey, comforting him into a lullaby unspoken. He just wanted to sleep. He couldn't remember the last time he'd slept more than three hours. Insomnia drives people mad, he heard it once.

And he was thirsty.

His mouth was dry and he could feel his hands shaking lightly. He shook his head, banning the thoughts that would eventually fall upon him.

Sakura opened one of her eyes, the green was so intense he could swear to himself that the colour alone could trap the whole world in a genjutsu that would leave the Infinite Tsukuyomi crying under the bed. She could see his soul and he could see hers. Her chakra touched him far too deeply and strong and he shivered. So did she. Sakura closed her eyes in a millisecond. It could’ve been all in his head. Insomnie drives people mad, he heard it once.

He pretend to close his eyes and felt the sun leaving.

"Did it hurt?"

It was like a lullaby. Like a too colorful lollipop forbidden by his parents, slapped gently out of his hand, prohibited until he finished his dinner and washed his plate. It was like hot chocolate dripping from strawberry you look through the window of a candy shop, but you have sweet tooth and diabetes. Like a bee in a flower and you are allergic. Like taboo, a book you’re too young to read, but you open it anyway.

Her eyes were closed still and he could tell that she probably haven't slept any more than he did. Her lips were cracked.

"It always does." he openly cracked one eye open to see her mirroring it, but with no humor at all – but she wasn't mad also. She could taste the saccharine dripping in between the red in the sky, leaving their fingers like cane molasses, sloppy with whitish gum, milky closed in amidst two fingers. She could indeed she inside his soul.

It didn’t matter. Her face didn’t betray a heart beat, even though he could feel it against his gloved finger over her pulse – he didn’t know when or why it got there. And she could feel his, her hand over his heart, his lung painfully recovered. It didn’t matter. After all, it seemed she mastered looking just as emotionless as he managed. He licked his lips, even though she couldn’t see it. The mask writhed. "Yes, it did sting a bit." he lied.

"Hm." she didn't believe. He just closed his eyes.

Maybe he drifted a back, 'cause when his eyes opened again it was because she was lifting his eyelids, pointing a sting annoying light. When he tried to move, her hands were already out his face and she was already up, stretching. He averted his eyes.

Damn, he was thirsty.

She gave her back to him and he tried to sit more comfortably on the hard floor. If he ever needed a proof she was fighting nearby, the cracked floor was the prove. The tree he was leaning was somewhat in its way to fall, half of the roots out. That made propping there a little bit harder. The ground was full of small cracks and some miles north there was a massive hole – just where her fist met soil the last time. There were only bits and pieces of the man she crashed (literally), right in front his eyes, saving him what could've been his death. The enemy was able to almost sunk the kunai over his eye, embed in purple poison that rolled over his eye and he'd thought he'd go blind. He didn't.

Lately, all of his guesses and bets just kept coming out wrong. Tsunade would've been proud.

Tsunade would've been proud of her, as well. The girl was indeed strong and rather good - great - as a medic.

And as person, at large. She’s grown. And he wouldn’t loathe himself and low his head by assuming he had nothing to do with it. He gathered through his life that every single misstep has its importance. The Butterfly Effect is precise. You could not remove a single grain of sand from its place without thereby changing something throughout all parts of the immeasurable whole.

The butterfly flapped its wings every time he looked at her, he encouraged her or reprimanded, the times he smiled or skipped the bill, every time he sneezed or escaped the hospital, when he would pretend he was aloof to the world, when he wanted to punch genning-Sasuke for treating her like shit, all of it shaped, molded her into the woman she was this day. It might seem ridiculous, but maybe it he didn’t offer her apple juice instead of grape juice that Wednesday three years ago some trait of her personality could’ve changed.

The thing about Butterfly Effect is that you will never know what would’ve changed if you turned into the wrong – or right – direction. You’re blindfolded and will be forever. Maybe that’s the beauty of it. Maybe that’s the curse. He would never know if there was something he should’ve done to make it all easier.

Small events can serve as catalysts that act on starting conditions.

Die instead of Obito? He’d go through this one a lot. Save Rin? Been there to save Minato? Or at least Kushina? Or instead? Be there for Naruto? Gluing Sasuke into a tree so he wouldn't flee and go rogue? Tell Naruto his father was The Fourth Hokage? Don’t gamble with Tsunade? Don’t drunk gamble with Tsunade? Look after Asuma more carefully? Look after his team? – see, it’s impossible to know if that’s about Asuma’s team or Kakashi’s. In the end, he didn’t look after none.

_Father_, he would think some days, _there is a growing queue of things I’d like to ask your help for and I don’t know where to put it._

Other days he would just do what he did at best – shut himself off from the world. Scratch the itch until it bled, quench his hankering, the world forgetting, by the world forgot, to drown and become deaf, mute, blind – except

He didn’t go blind.

"Get ready to move in 10."

_(It has been said that something as small as the flutter of a butterfly's wing can ultimately cause a typhoon halfway around the world – it was Chaos Theory, he read once.)_

Sakura was possibly a good leader as well. Maybe she'd be a good teacher, a good sensei, even. She didn't have a flick of patience but neither did he or Tsunade and she turned out okay – as far as “okay” is concerned on its definition. The kids would be lucky. She could be sweet when she wanted to. She also could pulverize your brains within seconds - that'd be even more effective to control brats. Yeah. She should give it a try, someday.

If the three of them, unstable and unbalanced, survived under his tutelage, well, she could pull it off to.

They were still alive.

He was a good teacher. _(He almost snarled to himself.)_

He was dead tired and didn't wanna move for the next days, but he could smell something in the air - something off. They'd better move fast then. He craved a seal into the almost fallen tree. The seal would activate and sent a warn to him if certain chakra-like signatures passed by. It was the best he could do by now. He was barely skin and bones, most of his weapons, scrolls, seals and shit were done. They had to store quickly.

He was doing mental notes when she came to stood in front of him again as he put himself up, still leaning against the falling tree, cleaning his hands in his pants, as if it would do any help. It didn’t. It was a chestnut tree.

Her eyes were dead serious now. None of the sweetness was there. She looked older like that. She was older. But, how old was she, again?

She threw a bottle at his feet and the glass exploded as if there was a explosive tag attached to it. _Explosive tags too_, he made a mental note to stock those too, his supplies were lower than he thought.

"Your sake stock ran out.” her voice was like platinum cutting on iron. It was like watching a tanto going against a sword, the sound cutting the air as much as it could cut a hand a head off. It made his teeth clench, but the mask didn’t budge. “I had to use in the injuries. Yours” – she pointed a finger with gnawed nails. “Included.” she dropped her hand and her eyes stared at him, so fiercely he knew he should be scared. She was mad. Angry. Livid. Wrathful. Disappointed, even. It should hurt. He didn't flinch.

"Next time, before I see it" she spoke even lower, as if she was telling him a secret. Even standing taller than her, she held a posture that made it look like she was the mother scolding her son that burnt the bread and digged his finger in the cake. Or the son that strangled a rabbit. He was a bad kid. "Burn. that. shit."

Lower and slower. She could be scary when she was like that – no hands into fists, no arms crossed in front of her. No, no. She didn’t look like a teenager pissed at her boyfriend. She looked like a tall empress in all her glory and hatred giving her plebs another chance to breathe. She was really fucking dead serious, her back stiffened. Her green, green eyes were a shade darker, due the light. They looked brown. A greenish brown.

“It’s not sake.”

If she was an empress, he was a fucking tall mountain, touched by the hurricane, but never bowing to it. He didn’t mean to disrespect her or to stand against her. He didn’t want to prove a point. He wanted to fucking sleep. To this war to be over. But he wasn’t about to bow. Bow to no one, was what he learnt – he didn’t heard or read that; he learnt. He wasn’t about to bow to Sakura, even if it was out of gratitude or to make the mission easier. The tension would be a dark, stormy cloud over their heads, no rest for the wicked, making their shoulders heavy and their eyes sting. Either you bow or you don’t. Two people can’t be right in the same discussion.

He wouldn’t bow.

“Wha- _what_?” her voice hit a higher pitch, her green eyes all but burned. The clouds were already there, at their backs, pulling them to the ground, gravity lulling it, against them. He was a level higher than she was, the ground uneven due her punch and she stepped in, one step to his right and one in front of him. She was still much smaller, but her eyes –

“It’s not sake” he pointed, calmly, as that was important somehow “It is, hum, vodka. Is stronger than sake.”

Her mouth opened infinitesimally and then closed with a click of her teeth. She looked like a warrior, her hair in the wind and her eyes as hard as his tightened pants in summer mornings. She could be merciful, but wouldn’t.

_(She didn’t have nails to break when she ran them over his back but her teeth digged to compensate. The howl was either from pain or pleasure, __i__t didn’t matter. I__t was muffled and reality was nothing but a dream, __high on amphetamines and poisoned by absinthe. Truth and existence were background noise __when she came for the second time and he threw his head back five _ _point two seconds later __while she was riding him, in the middle of the act, _ _nothing can be that __timed out, _ _and he smiled – his mask was still on and he didn’t know yet that Kurenai –)¹_

She eyed him skeptically and there was an inner struggle on beat the fuck out of him or just let it pass. He thought, he bet on, she would beat the life out of him.

She just stared at him a little longer.

"It's flammable, anyway." she spitted out.

Acid on his eyes would've been better. She spat blood on the ground with her back turned to him, ten feet away.

He looked at the remaining of what was a bottle.

He blinked.

She was walking away.

He didn't go blind.

* * *

Kakashi had a headache.

Nope. A headache was didn't do justice to his state. he felt like his skull was opening in half, blood dripping on his face. 

There was no actual blood, just sweat rolling from his brow to his eyes and the sides of his face. They were cold sweats and he knew what it meant. 

He was thirsty.

Te got up from the bed he didn't made in weeks, maybe months. The sheets were dirt, for sure, but he would most often pass out on his couch. Or the kitchen table. Or with his head resting in his upper arm in the toilet. He handt throw up in his bedroom and bed (at least in the past two months, so he was getting better – that was the lie he got used on telling himself). The stains on the kitchen skin were more tolerable and his ninken made sure the carpet and the couch were somehow bearable to his neighbours don’t complain about the smell of rotten flash or some shit like that. The truth is, Kakashi didn’t care anymore. Most of the times, he was able to reach the bathroom, its skin or the kitchen sink – sometimes he just threw off the window or at the street. But he was also getting better at not throwing up at all. It was hard, but your body is malleable. Some days it wasn’t even about the numbers of bottles. It just was. He didn’t have an explanation – and he wasn’t asking for medical opinion even if his life depended on it. Which, well, it probably did. _Getting to old for this shit_, he thought, everyday, and laughed. There are two options in the world: to laugh or to cry. Cry doesn’t change anything, he learnt between Rin’s death and Minato’s, so he just laughed and closed himself off – it was a win win situation. but he had to clean that sheet shit eventually. 

He wasn’t a fucking pig, either. He did fucking clean his place. He was just more often out than in. He didn’t have shampoo at his place and Pakkun was getting fucking sick of him constantly summoning him to ask for it.

The only thing he was still disciplined on was to feed his ninken, keep their water clean and make their beds. Everything else was disposable – himself included.

He stood on the door frame taking his bedroom state before his eyes.

It was a mess.

A huge mess. 

Piles and piles of scrolls following piles and piles of clothes he just ripped when he got home after a long mission or just a long day sitting in some bar that didn't recognized him at all, so he could keep going back to these shit holes. As long as no one recognized the feared Copy Ninja drinking himself into blessed oblivion he would coming back to repeat his ritual: get up, sometimes throw up, sometimes not, take a shower sometimes and sometimes not, eat something that probably was weeks beyond save, try to read, pretend to read, water his plants, check if the dogs had enough food and crystal water and descending through the stairs to the bar five blocks from his place. 

Some days he would go straight to the small market seven blocks from his place in the opposite direction of the bar. 

Some days he was so tired he would just pop up bottles from scrolls he saved for this kind of occasion. 

Kakashi didn't actually remember when it began. 

(_In the back of his mind, he knew precisely the _day_, but he kept lying to himself – stating the truth would put Obito as the trigger)_

Maybe, but just tiny, insignificant, microscopic, minuscule, puny it started when Obito practically begged to get drunk on his deathbed.

(_the very fucking truth wasn’t Obito. human beings have the ugly, ugly habit of pointing fingers. is easier to live this way. no one wants to bear the responsibility for its own mistakes. Kakashi was a dependent for years before Obito, he was just better at hiding – from everyone and from himself. but, hey, __blame your dead friend)_

They both knew he wouldn't last long, there was no cure for him, so they just enjoyed his last moments on earth getting considerably shit faced.

Obito never drank before, being smashed in half for a rock and then living with white Zetsus that kept asking him about stupid Kakashi, Rin and poop – which brings an interesting questions. Didn’t Madara poop, once he was Hashirama and a tree? Didn’t Obito? There were some drunk hazes Kakashi would catch himself down this road and then he would go through his pockets and find The Third’s pipe and God bless the Oblivion – and the very lovely Madara (And black Zetsu that, well, was black Zetsu. The world was a better place without black Zetsu. He was like a disease, like the meteor that killed the dinosaurs and gave room for humanity. Fuck your, black Zetsu. May your not-soul rest in Hell).

Madara never came by a friday night to have a beer and chit chat. Madara didn't even chit chat. He just opened that almost-dead mouth of his to fuel Obito's anger with so good well plans to end the world in such a very good idea, Jesus fuck, or to make him train harder. 

When the old man died (finally), he was too busy trying to fuck up with everybody's head so he could convince them all that declaring World War was a good idea (and cast a genjutsu that would put everyone to sleep just so he could see Rin. And maybe poke under Kakashi’s mask).

The boy didn't even had sex. Or kissed a girl. Or a boy. Or something, someone. 

His life sucked - from the beginning to its end. 

So Obito drank. And Kakashi drank with him.

When Obito asked for cigarettes, he bought nearly a hundred. Truth is, Obito was acting like a 16 year old that wants do to all the wrong things in life in a short period of time. Truly when he was 16 he had caused Minato's dead, ruined Naruto's life completely, slaughtering and manipulating people (not in this order, or so) and playing dumb with a high-pitch voice so no one would ever consider he was the mastermind behind it all. 

He didn't get drunk when he was 16 so he wanted to get drunk when he was 32. 

And so it began. 

(_liar, liar, your pants on fire)_

They would drink everyday and then Kakashi became Hokage (_fuck) _and they kept drinking everyday. 

Some days Obito was strong enough to sit in a wheelchair at the office. Some days Kakashi would bring scrolls to his hospital room and pretend he was working on it. He would just sign in the right line until his letter was impossible to read (his handwriting was impossible to copy because it depended on his humour. There were blessed days it looked like a Marriage Invitation calligraphy and there were days it looked like a code wrote by an elephant.)

**11.09.12 2:05 PM**

And there was the day he could actually take Obito to a bar. It was a random bar he thought dirt and dim enough no one would recognize his hair and, well, Obito just looked normal if you didn’t stared too closely to see he had half of his face kinda smashed, kinda healed. They began with a beer, just to lie to themselves they didn’t mean to get that shit faced.

It remains a mystery to this day who passed out first. 

**13.09.10 3:05 AM**

Sakura and Naruto found them. Meaning that by found them the bar owner was sick of they falling asleep, waking up, ordering more, falling asleep, getting sick, passing out, ordering more, and so it goes on. They ordered water, once. His students found them and Naruto is so damn fucking loud. 

"Sensei, what the hell?” he yelled, as if they weren’t into each other’s personal space. “Why would - did you brought Obito to a bar?”_ to get drunk. _“Why did you and Obito and passed out?” _ca__use we got drunk_ “How you didn't slip the bill?" c_ause we're still too drunk._

There was real confusion on his voice. And he was _shouting_ that confusion 'cause Naruto didn't learned how to be quiet. He would be such a shity ninja without the Nine Tails. 

Sakura, on the other hand, was quiet. And he liked it better when she was too shouting cause her silence only meant the she was mad beyond repair. And when Sakura was that mad – well, he learnt from Tsunade and she was pretty much like Tsunade, besides the breasts. But she did compensate in the as– 

Yep. If he didn't die from alcohol poison he would die with a bottle shoved down his throat impaled on Training Ground 3 with some carefully broken bones that hurt the most. 

That was already a hell of a hangover. 

Naruto caught Obito and Sakura caught Kakashi. He was a hundred percent sure she didn't need to hold him in such a thigh embrace to keep him from falling. It was getting a little bit hard to breath. She didn't look at him when he hissed in pain when she high probably broke a rib. She would be a shity medic if she was this angry at all her patients. 

"Uh, Sak’ura" the words were slurred and his line of thought was hard to keep. 

She didn't look at him. 

"Saku-ra” he sang, trying to steady his voice and sound a little more sober. He failed.

She didn't even flinch.

"Sakura, yo' know, you smell lik' rose. Or something like roses. No!” he said, very, very seriously. “No rose.” no roses at all. “Which is funny!" boy, what the hell 

She kept ignoring him. 

Was he actually saying the words or just thinking? His mouth was dry and it was really hard to put sentences together in some way that would make sense. 

He forgot what he was talking about when he troubled in his own feet and would've falling oh-so-no gracefully, but Sakura held him up. Well, she was more cutting his oxygen and crushing his side rather them trying to keep him walking. 

He was getting nauseous. 

His body wasn’t that used at the time – it wasn’t that used at the present. Fuck it.

"Sak, your _hairrr_" he extended the word. "It s'mell like, uh, something - som'thing fruit" yeah, fruit, that was the word. But it smelled like roses - no. Maybe melon. Or something like that “Melon!” a nice fruit. "Feel happy 'cause it's a r'lly nice smell, but I gonna throw up" his voice took a really heartbroken tone and

With that he swinged his head to the side and puked all over himself, at his knees and his own feet. 

Oh, shit

She yelled something, but, really, he couldn't make sense out of it. The world was spinning way too fast and he had to focus on not rolling out of it. 

He grabbed a wall – at least was his intention, but you can't actually grab a wall (he learnt from that, but he did tried to grab more walls during his life. When you feel the world really spinning down your feet you grab jackets, grass, people and fucking walls because everything is upside down. And, no, it is not funny as it sounds. It is pathetic. To be a grown up man and think that you can do something that stupid. Kakashi always laughed it off himself but there would be days he’d put two fingers down his throat just to try to expunge the shame out off himself. And there would be days he would drown two bottles down his throat to forget the shame he was) - so he kind slumbed forwards and hit his face. From the moment he couldn’t breath and he felt copper and steel in his mouth, he knew he broke his nose and maybe some teeth. His mask wasn't in place and he tried to fix it with his other hand, but the world made another turn and he actually fell. Over his vomit and Sakura's feet. 

When he looked up it was all a blur and double sighted, but her eyes were shining more than the usual. She had tears in her eyes and she was giving him a pitting look. 

_Pity is just another word for pathetic. _

he read once.

Those words kept ringing in his ears and he didn’t felt like gagging’ or drinking or anything. He didn’t feel like going to the hospital or to his place or to the Memorial Stone. He felt like he wanted to melt into the damned wall, to be a wall, to be the grass, the sky, the fucking clouds Shikamaru oh so loved. He didn’t even wished to be dead, ‘cause being dead meant he once lived.

He thought of his father. He thought of the word _genius_

_gen · ius_

_/ ˈJēnyəs /_

_noun_

_1._

_exceptional intellectual or creative power or other natural ability._

_Similar: brilliance; great intelligence; great intellect; great ability; cleverness; brains; erudition; wisdom; sagacity; fine mind; wit; artistry; flair; creative power; precocity; precociousness; talent; gift; aptitude; facility; expertise_

_capacity power faculty endowment strength strong point strong dexterity adroitness skill virtuosity _

_Opposite:_

_stupidity_

_2._

_a person who is exceptionally intelligent or creative, either generally or in some particular respect._

This word followed him his whole life, even when he failed everyone, everything. Even when he was called _Friend-Killer kakashi, Cold-Blooded Kakashi_, even then, even _thence_. Kakashi Hatake, the prodigy, the genius.

Where was that boy, that man now? He was sitting in his own vomit, at the feet of his students, whom he failed, with his best friend anchored, his death eminent.

(_and that was just the _be·gin·ning

/bəˈɡiniNG/

_noun_

_the point in time or space at which something starts.)_

Kakashi tried to get on his feet and regain his dignity, but it was all in vain. He just let Sakura drag him to the hospital. 

The first time of many.

he was thirsty

**13.09.10 8:32 AM**

Five hours later he was less nauseous, sober enough to lift his head from the pillow, he could feel his legs and things weren't twins anymore. He checked

He checked his surroundings to make sure he was alone and threw the hospital gown away - but he couldn’t find his clothes. When the reason stroke him, he felt sick, but it was a different kind of sick. Not his usual drunk sick, not like he downed way too many bottles. The kind of sick he felt disgusted, for the loss of a better word. 

His clothes were discarded because he fucking puked all over them (the not-first time of many). He just grabbed what was supposed to be his next change of clothes, some loose black pants and a black sleeveless shirt (with no mask attached) and put on the shirt in reverse and didn’t even bother on stealing one of the hospital masks - no one was going to see his anyway.

He got out the window and vanished in a poor excuse of a poor smoke. 

_ (Sakura saw it) _


	6. Hatefuck (CID 10 Z 73)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Do you kill War?
> 
> Or it simply kills you and keeps on killing until there is nothing left but sand?
> 
> Gaara would live through sand.
> 
> Would he? 
> 
> Nothing is immortal. Truly immortal. _Nothing._ The Universe needs balance and that’s why the Sage of the Six Paths created Tailed Beasts, to balance the power. That’s why they were scattered around the shinobi world – to maintain the balance.
> 
> Nothing is immortal, nothing lasts forever. 
> 
> And with Madara has to be the same. 
> 
> “Is this the power of a God?” Gaara said. _Yes,_ but Georg Hengel also spoke about the great pain of knowing that God is dead.  
“Nature is such that it marks everywhere, both in and outside of man, a lost God, purely as a phase, but also as no more than just a phase, of the highest idea.” 
> 
> Max Stirner wrote about the death of God and about the killing of God by humans,
> 
> I've read it once.

* * *

_October 3030, the begging of the 4th Great Ninja War_

* * *

> I was born with **glass bones** and **paper skin**. every morning I break my legs, and every afternoon I break my arms. at night, I **lie awake in agony** until my heart attacks put me to sleep.

* * *

NARUTO DIDN'T KNOW THE order things happened anymore. He didn’t know ever since his father appeared, his cloak ruffling in the air, the kanji showing whom he was, his blond hair and his presence so reconforting he wished he could just hug him. But he couldn’t. He was a leader now, just like his father once was. And, now, he would die for the sake of his people, just like his father did.

He wondered what crossed his father’s mind the day he died. If he considered flee, all those years ago, Kurama destroying it all — if he considered just for once second. Looked at his wife (his _mother_) and no matter how much Kushina, his mother, _his mother_, might protest, clamor, struggle, yell — just look into her eyes, their huge purple eyes, he go to see it, just once and say “Run.” and that’s that. Run. Naruto wish he said that. He could see that Kakashi-sensei thought about it a lot when he went to visit their graves. Everytime it was like he was like he was closing his eyes and coming back in time, grabbing them by the collar, shaking some good sense onto them and saying “Run!”. But Kakashi wasn't there and his parents were dead.

_ (Naruto wondered what Kakashi would say to his father if he could. He never could even fathom. What would you - what can you say? How do you ask your father not to kill himself? Naruto used to cry when he thought of that. _

_ Kakashi’s chakra was steady as always, not shaking in fear. He was there, leading them all, his life lying at his feet, but his chest taking the fire to protect those behind him. Naruto would never live up to come eye to eye to this man. _

_ Maybe that what he could say to Kakashi’s father, he ever got the chance.) _

The air was biting and the huge whitish stone monster was there, showing them how pathetically small they were. He was scared of the fucking huge Bijudama, Menacing Ball, Tailed Beast Bomb — you choose. So many names and just one purpose: dilacered. They built all the walls they could think of, all the strategy. But they would die. The giant purple thing he used to see with Kurama, he used to train with, he used to fear, but that, that was much more _ menacing _ and the killing intent was in the hair in his body, every single capillary, dominating all his cells and all his mind could think of was “How am I going to save them? I made a _ promise_. I never go back on my word.” But never going back on his word could be forgiven if he died, right? But if they all died there, two questions rose:

Who would be left to take them home?

Who would Madara feed dreams to then?

Then, he felt his father and his heart felt relief. He could feel the prayers around him, his comrades swallowing and everything wondering how would they survive, if they would and how would they fight afterwards. A line opened in the horizont and the ball vanished and he was never so happy to see what a thunderstorm meddled with all the natural catastrophes encapsulated in purple coming in one at their direction. If you put the world into a blender and shove it thunderstorms, hurricanes making peace and love with volcanos, tsunamis, cyclones, floods, landslides, hurricanes, typhoons, forest fire, meteor falls, storms of ice, hail and lightning then you would have a Bijudama. And _ that _ his father made vanish.

But the _ Fourth Hokage _ arrived — and he never wished so badly his father (his _ father,_ not the Fourth Hokage) never died. He wished to see his mother’s hair, red, vibrant, screaming just as loud as the Blast. He knew his mother would scare it all away. He never wished with all his might his parents were alive. They would brush his hair, they would hug him and thank the Heavens he was alive. His mother would scold him for not being too careful and being on the front lines, would like to meet his friends and would all but Chakra Chain everyone. His father would look at her lovely and put a hand at her waist. She would choke at the sight of Obito and probably she would be the one that would succeed to beat him down. 

The Red-Hot Habanero would come in all covered in her red hair and hold his hand. The Yellow Flash of the Leaf would put his hand in his shoulder. In the middle of the scrubs they would find each others eyes and their personality would leak, there, in the battlefield, smiling, smirking, grinning to one another and he would know he belonged, he existed. He wasn’t just the monster, the Number One Hyperactive, Knucklehead Ninja, Naruto, idiot, dobe, good for nothing. He belonged. 

But that was for him to dream of if he survived. Maybe he could steal a smile from his father in the middle of the madness. _ (Maybe he could surrender to the Infinite Tsukuyomi. Save them all and let if wrap himself. Would that really be selfish when you think about it? Try to have a decent life?) _

He barely began and he was already tired of fighting. Already tired of having the burden of the whole Shinobi World — the same World that despised him through his entire life.

Don’t mistaken Naruto for ungrateful. He was finally being recognized. That was his dream. But he wasn’t stupid, as everyone took him for. He was naïve, at the very best. He could feel he was being used and he was afraid like hell to be disposable. And, the worst part was, his father would be gone as soon as the War was over.

The only time Naruto Uzumaki saw his parents was when the World was about to end and he was about to die. He didn’t had the time to memorize their features.

Things happened in a blur. Naruto didn’t know the order the things happened no more. His father lost both arms, but he gave him it back. He wondered if with his new power he could see his mother again. 

_ (He knew he couldn’t) _

There was fire everywhere. It was all _ Fire. _Be the Will of it or the fucking Uchiha. Everyone was dropping dead and who was to blame? The mad man? That Kaguya fairytale the Sage told him? Mankind?

The insane pursuit for power?

Do you kill War?

Or it simply kills you and keeps on killing until there is nothing left but sand?

Gaara would live through sand.

Would he? Or that was just another escape route so Naruto would feel better for pretending that not every single person would die in his hands like Neji did? And Neji was the one that died in his arms literally. How many others were dying and were about to die?

They kept on fighting. All of them. They were still fighting Obito, Madara and the Ten Tails – that fucking thing doesn’t die, for Heaven’s sake. It is like the most powerful thing ever, but it really should die. Right? Nothing is immortal. Truly immortal. _ Nothing_. Not truly immortal. The Universe needs balance and that’s why the Sage of the Six Paths created the Tailed Beasts, to balance the power. That’s why they were scattered around the shinobi world – to maintain the balance.

Nothing is immortal, nothing lasts forever. 

And with Madara has to be the same. 

“Is this the power of a God?” Gaara said. _Yes, _but Georg Hengel also spoke about the great pain of knowing that God is dead. _“Nature is such that it marks everywhere, both in and outside of man, a lost God, purely as a phase, but also as no more than just a phase, of the highest idea.”_ Max Stirner wrote about the death of God and about the killing of God by humans.

I've read it once. 

So, yes, Gaara. It is the power of a God. 

And he is going down — eventually

Yet, there it was: Madara yelling and yelling about dancing, and the Infinity Deceit, the Red Moon made of an enormous Sharingan, _ dancing, fucking dancing _ (like to watch me dance, go to my ballet performance) and God, please, couldn’t it just stop? What does it bring to Madara? Why he wants that? To have the peaceful shinobi world he wanted from the beginning? This wasn’t _ peace _! Nobody told him that?

“Oi! You!” Madara didn’t hear. Jesus. “Creep, annoying, don’t know when to shut it, you!” He was yelling some annoying shit the other direction. 

Naruto had to scream from the top of his lungs. The battlefield was so loud he couldn’t barely make his own words.

“_Y__ou, old coconut!” _He heard this time. “Didn’t anyone tell you that casting a genjutsu over the entire world isn’t the same thing as "_peace_?" It is just decisiveness. You’re being stupid!”

It isn’t Naruto’s regular approach. He convinced bad guys talking about ramen and stuff, sad pass and swings, but he was told Madara wasn’t that kind of guy, but trying wouldn’t hurt. Right?

“You’re just fucking dumb, kid.” Was his polite and thoughtful answer followed by the biggest fire dragon Naruto ever saw. He decided approaching Madara wasn’t a good idea.

“I told you, you can’t win him with talk no jutsu.” Kakashi said, smirking, his chest was open, but wasn't profusely bleeding anymore. 

“Fuck off, would ya?”

His sensei just smiled more, his eye creasing further and Naruto wondered if the man had fallen into madness or if facing death so close was enough to loosen him and rip a true smile from what seemed like a painful motion. 

He looked around and Sakura was scolding Kakashi at the same time she was healing what seemed to be an open fracture in his leg and he was still smiling. Maybe he was high. But seeing everything from where he was brought the world from a new perspective.

Naruto was standing in a pile of rocks that gave him a better access to the battlefield, he could see almost everyone. He didn’t have the time to dwell or admire how beautiful the scattered innocence, untidy faces, traces of tears, spatter of blood can make the bat of eyelids sound magnificent and how alive you can feel with the gush of wind; live is only precious because it ends — you realise one day. If often does when you’re about to lose it. 

He truly didn’t know how they managed to stay alive for that long, because the man was a God and he was immortal. Naruto had his amount of immortals as well, but Madara was a level up. And Obito was fucking crazy, fucking delusional and everytime it seemed they finally got him they didn’t. He tried as hard as he could not to look who else was dying. If he saw, if he acknowledged he would break and he couldn’t break there, not now, not ever — not in front of them, not when they _ entire shinobi world _was counting on him.

Now he understood Kakashi, but sideways. He always said he was too old for that shit, but Naruto felt too young.

“Hey!” His closest clone yelled. “Kakashi-sensei!” His teacher spared him a glance and he was so covered in blood and he looked like a veteran, like an expertise, like power and fury — like a legend. Like a broken mas that needs to kill his best friend. He looked like his father, the ghost of the White Fang pouring over them, even if Naruto never saw the man, he knew that, he just knew. So he decided to tell him nothing. “Thank you.” Was his only statement and also covered in blood he smiled to his mentor whose eyes crinkled with a real smile and no words were needed no more. 

Naruto didn’t say anything because when Kakashi was his age he had already lost everything he had and he had so many ANBU mission over his belt than Naruto had been punched by Sakura and said “believe it!”.

And, then, Neji died.

In the middle of his disconsolateness, something happening and Kurama’s chakra _ died_. He wasn’t glowing orange anymore. No one was. (He wanted to be worried, worried sick, but he couldn't)

In a moment, it was Neji’s body over his, telling him he sacrificed himself from being called a genius. He saved him saved Hinata — that had had sacrificed herself (“_I__ love you” he remembered her saying in the day Pain almost killed her — but he hugged Sakura instead). _ The next moment he convinced Obito, all white, gray and green, after Black Zetsu tried to eat him, to come to their side, that Rin wouldn’t ever love that version of him. It wasn’t Obito, that was Tobi and Tobi was no one – neither Obito nor Madara. Tob was Tobi. (Tobi wasn’t real, Obito) The next moment the Sage of the Six Paths shared Indra and Ashura story — how Madara and Hashirama were _ born _ to fight, how him and Sasuke were _ meant _ were born, were made, were _ meant _ to fight. From the moment of their birth to the moment of their death, their faith was to fight and put an end to it, either for the Good or for the Bad. He started glowing, the six black balls around him, fluing, Sasuke had the Rinnegan, Kakashi-sensei almost lost an eye (again) and when Sakura put her hands to try to help him, fix him, something, he came and gave him a new eye. Just like that. Because now he could, he _ can_.

He was now some sort of God.

The fight was no longer for the mortals.

Yet, it didn’t stop Madara.

All his generation knew about war was what they read in books, learnt in the Academy or heard by the fire eating canned food. And reading about something and living it is two completely different dimensions.

Everywhere he looked at there were screams, there was blood. Water, fire, wind, lightening, earth. It was all collapsing and all in fusion. It was all part of one another, it was impossible to distinguish.

It was Madara against the World, but that was enough. It was scary how much one man alone could hold so much power.

The former wars were between shinobi. It was man against man. Eye for eye. It was fair, almost. There were some freakishly strong against standard man, but it was _ fair_. This, this thing, right now, was anything but fair.

The fight went on and on and on. It lasted for days. Days and days and days. 

At one point, the flower blossom. Some were caught the second it opened. Yamato was one of those. He just got released from White Zetsu and he barely blinked. C followed him, among with Suigetsu — for what they could tell. They kept fighting to find ways to stay in the shadows, small caves, bury themselves in ground, mud walls, everything. 

By the day, they fought back, with all they had. Everyday more fellows fell. The caves where being blasted, exploded, the rocks they had at their back were shattered so they were losing the shadows it would cast during the night, the holes they entered and closed with wood and vices were bombed. 

So, those who managed to survive the day, died at night. Madara was especially cruel to destroy their shells and havens preferentially at night, when they were hiding. 

Sasuke would appear here and there. He wasn't the savior when things got really ugly and it seemed there was no escape — when those moments came, they themselves managed. Sasuke was there like a visitor, like he was there just because he had nothing better to do — like his fucking _ rinnegan _ had nothing better to do, like it wouldn’t basically _ save _them. He would show up out of the blue, help, because he was as much as a God as Naruto and puff, vanish in the air. Trying to hold onto him was like trying to catch smoke with your hands. 

After a particularly nasty night where Sakura lost her wits on her anger because of him, as soon as the moon began to sat, she left the cave they were in and sent a rock bigger than a tree in the direction of Madara that was caught in surprise — and, for the first time, in a long, long time, he spat blood and lost his breath. Sakura didn’t waste time celebrating. She sent what was supposed to be a tree and it didn’t hit him fully, but he still got hit. He planted his feet in a rock, crouching, trying to access where it was all coming from, once they barely took the offensive anymore and she punched the ground in uttermost strength, the ground exploded, just like it did at the bells test, a nature force 

_ (She would never know, but Kakashi was smiling) _

and sent a good 5 km range open. It all trembled as if an earthquake hit them straight in the gut. Madara had his eyes wild, staring at the disheveled pink girl, her eyes, even at the distanced, glowed and, for a moment, he calculated that a punch from her would be worst then from The Beast. It crashed all the soil all the way to where he was seated and further. The place looked like a desert, all the vegetation gone and now it looked like the sertão. 

Madara fought back, but something was odd, was beginning to feel odd. Or all they were too used to his fighting style or they were going freakishly strong out of nowhere or Madara was having a bad day or Sakura hit him too hard, but he wasn’t _ that _ overpowerful. 

See, the man was a monster. He was a fucking God and just being is his presence ma de the air cold, and people were dropping day after day after day. The tree was huge. Bigger than anything they ever saw. And everyone was there. 

It was just them. 

They had the former Hokages by their side, (but all the living Kages fell, leaving only Tsunade), Naruto and Sasuke overpowered, Kakashi-sensei, overpowered Obito, Sakura and her Strength of a Hundred Seal, but they were facing the wrath of a God. An immortal God.

Everyone else has fallen already.

It was just them against Madara. It might seem easy. Ten against one, but the bastard refused to die. If was fucking annoying. Every time they managed to hit him, he raised to his feet.

"Something is wrong with this fucker." Tsunade said in between her breaths. Her pigtails wew a long lost fantasy and she still had her stomach uncovered.

The Hokage looked older. Not just as older as she was, not like the henge fell, but older as in tired, as in almost _ scared_. Tsunade was never scared (She was, Naruto, she was). She was though. She was _ scary_, not scared. Naruto wondered what actually happened to them when he had to leave the five of them to fight Madara.

_ (Later on he found out she was strong enough to make a Susanoo'o crack, but he put five of those to each of them. He found out too that she used all her med-nin power to heal them all while she was pretty much cut in half. Looking like that, the woman seemed immortal. She wasn't.) _

"I know." Was all Tobirama said, his Hitai-ate nowhere to be seen, his shoulders absent of anything but a flak jacket that was ready to fall. His deep voice was deeper and his eyes were harder and angrier than Naruto thought it was possible. He was reincarnated, so he looked scary enough anyway. But, black orbs apart, it seemed that his gaze alone would be enough to tear all pieces off Madara apart.

"What do you mean?" Sakura yelled from where she was. Her face was so dirt her eyes seemed to jump off — she wasn't scared, though. Naruto didn’t know if that was good or no. Kakashi used to have that expression.

Madara chose a new fight instance. He divided between two limbo and four kinds Susanoo'o that wasn't all that tall and imponent. The crazy bastard was yelling crazy shit they all were tired to listen to — that shit he kept saying about dance and shit. Dance in hell, you fucker. But he only divided in two limbo clones and the small versions of blue annoying thing.

Which was odd enough in itself. His Susanoo’o, the shit he was so proud about was _ smaller_. It was almost half of its normal size and it wasn’t so fast – but it was fast enough, though.

It was odd indeed.

For a man that released twenty five Susanoo'o and was playing with six limbo clones using just this was weird as fuck.

Even his voice seemed odd. Naruto shrugged it off, at first, thinking that maybe it was because he spent _ an entire month _yelling, but his lungs didn’t seem to be giving him all the oxygen he needed. 

"He is weak." Minato said, his cape didn’t have neither sleeves and was ripped in diverse places. "Before, he was fighting like a madman, using everything, throwing things with his infinite chakra. Now, it almost seems like he is holding up."

"Why would he do tha—"

Naruto's phrase was cut when the Susanoo (smaller, but annoying) almost crushed him with his still big ass sword.

They divided themselves in teams that kept in rotation so the man couldn't read and interpreted their pattern of fight. It was risk, but it was their best shot. You need to get familiar with each others fight style, that’s what teams are for, but they were good, they were fucking tremendous – and even though Naruto, Sakura and Sasuke (when he gave 'em the grave of his presence) weren’t elite shinobi (yet) they were doing a fucking great job, thank you very much.

The real Madara was using a distance fighting style, using fire style jutsu more than approaching. He had a huge arsenal, but they had a copy nin — every time the man decided to throw a new jutsu at them, Kakashi assessed his mental arsenal and counterattacked. He hadn't the same strength, but it was fun enough to see Madara burn with rage to see someone a thousand years younger using his own jutsus back at him.

Their fighting style was settled as a defensive one, jumping from here to there and attacking once in a while, more in the goal to distract than cause damage.

The limbo clones were the real issue. But Minato managed to mark them with seals and share it with every single one of them, so every strike of the clones in their direction was a millisecond dodgeable — they almost lost their arms, heads, stomach, lives, but they were doing fine.

Naruto just couldn’t wrap his mind on why that was happening. On how it was all happening. For a whole month all he did was _ survive. _ He barely fought back. Kakashi-sensei was in a limbo between using some of his Mangekyou power’s without the eye itself (the man adapts), but he didn’t have the Sharingan anymore. Sakura was monstrous and he didn’t have to say anything about the Hokages. And Sasuke. 

Fucking Sasuke Uchiha. 

All his brother was, he could tell Sasuke would never be. He barely knew Itachi Uchiha, but he could tell the man would never flee even less when he had power enough to help them to _ win_. Yet, his foolish little brother wasn’t consumed only on vengeance. He was fucking selfless. People were _ dying_, because no, they weren’t just getting caught in the genjutsu. Every now and then, Madara would kill someone just for the sake of it. 

The battles in daylight were always the worse. They didn’t have to hide and to fight with eyes closed, but Madara could see them and seeing them he could do as he pleased. They were running out _ everything_. The summons were having a hard time on bringing supplies. It wasn’t like they had soldiers to send home and bring them supplies. No. They had to deal with what they had. And that meant losing several pounds. 

They moved the battlefield the best they could. They began retrieting, trying not to show. It was a silent agreed, but they decided to retreat to the Leaf. Of fucking course Madara noticed, but he didn’t care. You could run and run and no matter how far, the moon would catch you. Yet, he wouldn’t let anyone rest. 

He kept attacking, they kept defending, they kept trying to survive. All and any kind of summon was to be sent to the Leaf, do its best to seal food and medical supplies and drop them. The amount of soldier pills they had to consume would probably leave permanent damage to their gastrointestinal system, but who giver a ratsass. The amount of _ pills _ they had to consume would probably leave permanent damage — just as so many other things they had to use. 

Naruto anger grew everyday, just as hunger grew in everyone’s bellies and just as much the tree seemed to grow with any new person it held captive. 

Every new comrade taken was another drop of hatred in the Uzumaki cup of hatred — and it was about to spill.

Everyone was using their abilities, but they wouldn't last that long.

As if reading everyone's mind, Kakashi said. "We can handle this just for a while longer.” He was panting. Him, Obito and Sasuke were the ones that fell on the celebration of Madara’s hit the bull's-eye. “There is indeed something wrong with him. He is fighting from distance and his clones aren't powerful enough —" His trail of thought was brutally interrupted when the Susanoo'o foot hit Tsunade straight in her gut and sent her flying for 70 meters at least, hitting a big rock that almost fell all over her.

Kakashi's soul made a double twist and bile rose to his mouth, but he thought fast (_a genius) _ and sent a big ass shuriken embed with a purple fire and lightning in the direction of the rock making it explode. His mind was spiralling in the fact that if Tsunade was crushed that would be no Madara with Hashirama cells to save her. He wished, once again, it was him.

Despite blowing the rock small pieces hit her and an annoyingly still big one hit her in her head and she fell to the ground like a heavy potato sack, completely still. Her black adornment vanished from her skin and that, that meant one thing.

(_Why, oh fuck, oh why things only mean _ one thing_, one fucking bad thing when it happens? Why it couldn’t just mean something like hitting rocks offend the ink so it leaves? Why the absence of chakra means that the people is dead? Why things ever mean one thing? Why is ever the worst thing? Why is always _

_ death) _

The Strength of a Hundred Seal only vanished when the owner decides to or when it is forced out of them. Naruto's stomach tightened.

Sakura's scream filled the air and it was they could hear for what seemed miles and miles away and the time seemed to froze. 

Until she ignore the limbo clone to run in the direction of her shishou, she received a hit straight in her face, that probably broke her chin and she fell to the floor as well, like a heavy potato sack, but she was still conscious. She spit blood and her face glowed green within seconds and she was again in her feet. When she reached again to run, Kakashi held her by her waist and threw both of them to the ground, building an earth wall moving his hands so fast it wasn't possible to follow with the eyes just in time to hide them from a fireball the size of the rock Tsunade hitted.

In one heartbeat Naruto tucked Tsunade over his shoulder and formed, again, what seemed to be a thousand shadow clones. The real Naruto took Tsunade out of the frontline. His Kurama chakra returned to him and all his clones formed different shaped and colored Rasengan and sent them in the direction of all the threats — the real Madara included.

The moment his strongest clone touched the real man, the moon glowed a pale red and he was gone in a puff of smoke.

“Nice dreams, kid. I am sorry about your Hokage. Quite waspish, she was. Pretty, but death comes to you all.”

With that, Madara kicked the bucket and Naruto was torn into rage and grief — he couldn’t tell which was screaming louder and it was deafening. 

It was the end, he thought. It was the end because Tsunade died and he didn’t know how they would escape the genjutsu again. It was night, they couldn’t hide like they did for the past two days. All their hiding spots, all their plans were gone already. That was it.

The end.

Naruto braced himself, not knowing what to do, grief and anger eating him — but, for once, Sasuke wasn’t so selfish and his Susasoo’o appeared out of nowhere and took them all under its wing, shielding them. Sasuke wasn’t nowhere to be seen during the whole fight, over all this last days, but now he showed up. And Naruto wanted to punch him just as much as he wanted to thank him — but mostly punch him.

“You fucker!” Tobirama was pointing a finger at him, a blue envergy raising from his fingers and Sasuke faltered. It Tobirama and it wasn’t surprising that he was scolding an Uchiha, but the boy was two thousand years younger and Naruto couldn’t care the slightest.

“Tobirama…” Hashirama put a hand in his brother’s shoulder, that was glowing blue, his chakra so strong that filled the space of the Susanoo’o wing. The elder brother seemed to be walking in the direction of the Uchiha, but was forced to halt, in shock. “Don’t yell at a kid.”

“A kid? A _ kid_, Hashirama? By his age everyone here had seen _ wars _ and fought them already. He is just an —”

“Inconsequent brat.” Kakashi voiced. 

They all were killers, assassins. There was no reason to deny it. Maybe, for the first time since Sasuke decided to go rebel angst avenger he felt the weight of his true actions. He didn’t have any escape route here. There was no Madara, no Zetsu, Orochimaru, distractions. He was caged. He was caged and Kakashi barked at him, a hungry wolf, drool at his chin and no one wanted to stop him.

Naruto’s head was spinning and no matter how much he seemed to enjoy people finally telling Sasuke that he was a spoiled little petty sucker, he _ broke_.

He broke in a way no one ever predicted.

“Why the fuck Madara is even so fucking obsessed with this Infinite Tsukuyomi?”

Even after controlling Kurama’s chakra, now Naruto wasn’t burning that ugly orange that made him look like a toy that shines neon light in the dark. The neon light made him look more like a candle, a spinning toy, an amusement park. No. Naruto was Pain, right now. Skeleton bones and red noise. He was pure what he was when he didn’t have control — he seemed like a beast, an animal, a treat.

It was pure red rage in the air, so strong it hit them as if they stuck their heads in an oven and let it burn them. The ground shook with the impact and the first thing that came to mind was to treat him in a way to take him out of this anger and put him anywhere else. (It didn’t fucking work, I spoiler it to you.)

“Hey, boy, watch your language around your father.” Tobirama said, that dark tone of his, his arms forever crossed in front of him, but he was now only in a black shirt with shreds of his armour still clung to him, all his uniform was half disintegrated.

“Yes, Naruto, please,” Minato began, his voice soft, but strong. “This isn’t how – this isn’t – isn’t how –” his voiced dropped and in the screams it was barely audible.

“How you raised him?” a snarled mocked laugh left Sasuke’s lips, the closest thing of a smile playing in the corners. “That you wanted to say, Namikaze, uh?” contemptuous, insolent. “You didn’t fucking raised him at all. You died before you could clean the drool from his chin.”

“Fuck you.” Kakashi’s voice was low, so low it sounded pure bass, fuck the baritone, he could touch the ground (only 5% has bass voice) and could raise dust and gold and sand and swallow Sasuke. He turned to him and in that moment the killer all of them never actually truly saw — they were _ beside _ him in the battlefield, not standing there and appreciating, the murderer in his eyes, the metalic taste of blood danced on the tongue of them all — shined in his direction and it appeared as everyone hold their breath and took a minimal step back. This wasn’t a sensei and his student. This was the legend and the traitor.

_ (He wouldn’t ever know, but there were two pair of eyes sat on Sasuke with the same intensity, but Kakashi had his burden in that moment. He couldn’t spare glances, his eyes were daggers filling the floor with Sasuke blood. He wasn’t alone though. Blue and green were with him. Sasuke lost them longer than he thought.) _

“And yeah, Kakashi, you would know that. Wasn’t like your father was there to raise you either.” Sasuke said again, but the mockery wasn’t so loud. Kakashi might not have his sharingan, but his eyes turned red.

“Hey, you don’t have to throw him into this. It isn’t him that make it happen to you.” was it Obito? Obito defended Kakashi – to save Sasuke’s skin (no) or to spare Kakashi’s pain? 

(“Throw it at me, it seemed that Obito was saying. Throw it all at me. I helped to slaughter your clan, kid. I might’ve not killed your parents, but I did helped to give the street a nice red wash.”)

Either way, it just made Naruto turn to him, anger boiling.

“Obito, oh, yeah, I should throw this at you. _Yo__u _ were the one that killed my father. You were the reason he died.”

“Naruto, you should control your anger. Throwing it at everyone –” Kakashi tried. Kakashi, the pacifist — at heart, because in action he kills more than breathes. Why Kakashi still tries? Why doesn’t he rips Sasuke’s throat?

“I am not throwing it at everyone, I am throwing it at you! You” did he point to Sasuke or to Kakashi? Why is he mad at Kakashi? “and this fucking psycho.” he pointed to Obito, almost closing the space between them and shoving a finger in his chest that would break his rib cage. “Why the fuck is he still here?”

“Why the fuck are you still upset with this?” Sasuke, bitter. Sasuke never understands.

“Why the fuck are _ you _ still here?” Naruto bit back at Sasuke, red, orange and blue, the air cutting deep like a kunai.

“Naruto, calm down. This is not the time to be freaking about whomever is — this is exactly what he wants, what Madara —” this time, it was Hashirama, pacifist. No wood, just a fireplace in the summer. Useless.

“This is not what he wants!” Red is scary, Naruto. “What he wants is to control the fucking world! And we don’t even know why he is so obsessed with this. I can even understand Obito, ya’ know.” he turned to the man, mocking him. No one knew Naruto could be cruel, but he could and a lot. He just never, ever showed. He knew how much it hurted, but he wanted to hurt now. Really, really badly. “He couldn’t even stand the girl he loved didn’t love him back. She loved someone better than him and Obito was a parasite.” his gaze fixed in Obito again, his eyes red. “You needed Madara to tell you what to do ‘cause you couldn’t even think, uh?”

“That’s the brightest conclusion that brain of yours managed, Naruto?” Obito was falling apart, white, green, black, no heart, no future. Just a fine Rin-line and Kakashi’s pardon. Minato would hug him too and that made Naruto skeleton grow even further and his red vibrating form just broiled them. 

“Is that what you think, kiddo? That’s what I wanted? You think that I was so self-centered, so stupid? That’s what you’re telling me?”

“Yes! That’s what I want — that I am telling you! I want to fucking spit in your face, fucking Uchiha. You killed my mother, you killed my father, you fucking destroyed all for me, for Kakashi, you made a monster out of me, people hated me, I had to live with this.” tears, so hot, streaming down, but evaporating in the anger rolling out of his skin. “Now I have to _ kill _ people, I have to kill because of you, I have to kill a bastard that came out alive, came back from the dead just to fucking absorb mortal people and get — get a fucking entire tree? Just to put everyone to dream so he can — what the fuck does he even want with this?”

“I don’t —” Obito, confuse, defeat.

“Oh, no. No, no, excuse me, I’m sorry. No, no, no! You don’t know it, you don’t know anything about this. He never told you! He kept like — like training you, for what, Kakashi-sensei!” Naruto waved his arms to catch Kakashi attention “how long it was that Obito died?” he didn’t wait for an answer “Oh, yeah, something like _ eighteen years_, with this twisted fantasy, fucking around and messing with people’s heads and he didn’t ever tell you why he wanna come up with —”

“Naruto, calm down!” Kakashi ordered, didn’t plead.

“I won’t cal— ”

“Stop!” Sakura, all pink, all red, all black, fused in blood and tiredness, her sensei at her feet, a thousand strengths worth in her skin.

“You weren’t there!!” Naruto yelled at Kakashi, accusing him, finally, not knowing whom was who, whom to blame, who abandoned him and his parents, his life.

“It was not his fault.” Minato tried again, his own anger there. Kakashi never saw him angry before.

“Oh, oh-ho!” Naruto half shouted, half laughed it off with no humour at all. He was fucking losing it.

“Shut up!” Sasuke, all black and purple, in the deity of his red and black spirals, interrupted the discussion not about him because he couldn’t stand being in the shadows.

“You shut the fuck up!” Sakura, all pink and anger.

“Show some respect.” Sa-su-ke, slippery, thinking he still owned her, tried. _ Show me some respect, Sakura. _

Kakashi threw a kunai with explosive tags at him, one he barely dodged, oh so arrogant he was. His eyes, purple and red, widened, like he was betrayed even if he was the traitor to them all. His black hair framed his face like a framework of a medieval painting lost in time: beautiful, trying too hard to be terrifying, but the time ate it out. His sword was in his hand and Kakashi’s tanto shined white in the air — White Fang, Chio yelled while he tried to explain himself, his chest probably aching as much as Naruto’s did all the times he thought about his father. He didn’t know Kakashi used his tanto again. Obito moved too, wounded nevertheless his spinning wheels eye was alive and angry. If a fight took place there it wouldn’t be friendly.

“_Stop this! _” a thunderstorm yelled.

Tobirama Senju was a quiet man, but right there, only two words, only a finger raised and Sasuke remembered his grandeur back when he brought the four back.

His figure was surrounded by blue and power. The Third Hokage shrunk — the man was his sensei once. Not even Hashirama moved this time. Now they weren’t the Hokage’s disputing. No. It was the older and wiser of them. Tobirama was the older brother, the sensei, the Second Hokage. _ He _ was someone worth bowing to.

Through his blind hatred for the Uchiha many took him for just obsessed and forgot his raw power — but in that moment only two words was all it took for all to shut. Still, he looked at Naruto less than a minute later giving him his blessing — _ clean your soul, kid _ it said. Naruto deserved it, after all.

“Drop this, Naruto. Please.” Sakura turned her eyes, that no longer looked all that green and naïve — she didn’t look like the girl he once loved. Green tea looked too much like honey bums now. She looked too much like Tsunade like that, bearing too much in her shoulders, him himself included, trying to save him, stop him.

“Stop it, Sakura.” Naruto couldn’t bear being saved by them.

“Naruto —” neither being pitied by Kakashi.

“Shut the fuck —” he turned to his sensei, hot tears in eyes again and they were as red as the sharingan that drowned them to this mess.

“Naruto! Enough! Show him some fucking respect! He was your sensei and —”

“And? Why should I show some respect, dad? He wasn’t there.” his voice was hoarse, but the fight wouldn’t die soon.

_ (there _

_ \ ˈt͟her \ is an adverb. learn to pronounce: in the UK is /ðeər/ in the US is /ðer/ and who the fuck cares. _

_ "there" to Naruto meant the day his parents died. Where, maybe, someone could've done something. Not just them; not just his mom and dad. There is no way to know if that would've changed something. It would forever be a butterfly flapping its wings. But Naruto couldn't stand the idea that no one was there, because, if someone was indeed there, the only thing they did was watch his parents die. And that was unforgivable.) _

“He was there.” this time it was Hiruzen who spoke, his voice so raucous as if he forgot how to speak even before his death.

“Who the fuck are you to tell this, God of Shinobi? _ You _ weren’t there.”

“He was there.” Kakashi insisted on that, but there was venom in his voice. The way charcoal looked down the whole gray man made Naruto shiver — Kakashi was a man of strict following rules and that included the respect, but his eyes showed he despised the former Hokage. For some reason if comforted Naruto.

“He wasn’t there.” Naruto denied, talking about Hiruzen. His voice was shaky.

Being confronted with the fact that people just watched his parents die was as painful as looking at Obito in the eye.

“He was there.” his father confirmed.

Naruto mouthed “no”, perplexed and angry. How many times can one person fail you and stand in front of you as if nothing happened, without apologizing? He didn’t know whom he should ask first, but his eyes flew to Sasuke.

“He was there, then. Good. And did precisely what he did through my whole life: nothing.” sometimes the silence is deafening.

Hiruzen lowered his head and prayed for losing his tongue, biting it out and bleeding his entire past. He was to blame for so much of that. He knew from the beginning and never did anything. He could feel his sensei’s eyes all over him, but he couldn’t face him. Tobirama’s disappointment tears your worse than a thousand daggers and suffocates you to a point of no return until you can no longer separate what once was your dignity from the reproach you turned into.

Danzo once suffered from it.

He didn’t do nothing then either.

Naruto didn’t have to know that.

He mouthed again, “no”. A person can’t disappoint you that much and not blast into dust.

_ (Sasuke was still standing, wasn’t he? But the Third Hokage would disappear into dust as soon as the jutsu broke so technically he built a roster of delusion in Naruto’s chest herein so many others. People sometimes turn to clay, powder and you just don’t see. [Sometimes, too, what the eyes don’t see, the heart doesn’t feel. At least, that’s what his heart hold onto despairingly) _

“He wasn’t there.” Naruto accused again.

Silence. So the anger boiled, like soup to the sniffing nose in the winter.

“He came in with troops to watch your death and that’s it?” once again, Tobirama was blue and Hiruzen was nothing but a hole in space — a hole Naruto went to punch. He turned to Kakashi instead.

“You were there.”

It was a charge.

The silence meant guilty.

This time, Naruto punched him. 

“Naruto, don’t!” Minato began to run to his side, but Kakashi already hit the wall/Susanoo’o and taking deep breaths, cleaning the blood from his mouth, only lifted his hand laying on his side trying to get up. He didn’t refuse Obito’s hand when he offered nor Sakura’s glowing hand.

“I didn’t do anything neither.” Kakashi said, resigned. As always; as always, carrying the blame for all that happens in the world.

“Stop it.” it was Sakura to hiss.

It is incredible how easily a woman can be forgotten, even when she was healing a comrade just seconds ago.

All eyes turned to her.

She was no longer a liability.

“Drop it, Kashi. Just fucking stop it. Stop this pity party.”

The world slowed its pace around them, her eyes hard, mad and his eyes between defiance and assuming it. It didn’t have to be spoken to be understandable.

It was like the bottom of a giant puzzle finally trying to fit, finally trying to show an image and that small, tiny shit seemed to bright. For Minato, Obito and Naruto seeing someone that was always held so fragile to be so hard and settled, with enough resolve to put Kakashi to at least think to _s__top _ would be lifting a burden.

But Tsunade was still at their feet and Tsunade was the one that healed Kakashi from Itachi’s Tsukuyomi and Kakashi and Sakura understood that, no words needed, when they looked at his eyes. One burden half one, a huge one new.

And then

“What the fuck is going on here?” for once, Sasuke asked something worth listening.

_ (What the fuck is going on here? Here was too much happening all at once. All the conflicts were meeting tere. Naruto with his father, Naruto with Obito, with Kakashi, with the Hokages, with his whole life. Sakura with Sasuke, Sasuke with Naruto, Kakashi and Sakura. Sakura and Naruto. Hiruzen and Tobirama. Tobirama over everyone. Kakashi and Obito. Fights for power, over fairness, friendship, arrogance, loss, everything was meeting _ here _ and _ here _ was a fucking terrible place to have this discussion.) _

“Shut the fuck up, Sasuke!” Sakura pointed a finger at him, her eyes so wild he recoiled but stepped in front again.

“I ain’t even talking to you —”

“Drop dead.” was all Kakashi said and turned his back to him. Honestly, even if the line sounded like teenager-esque, it wasn’t the time to bicker with him like a twelve year old. Sasuke looked so much like Madara when Hashirama arrived at the field and didn’t have time to play warfare with him.

Sasuke is a fucking crybaby and everyone is sick of it.

Sasuke would never see Sakura as an person, leave it alone as an opponent, so she took it in her favour and feasted in her favourite genjutsu — a particularly nasty one. See it as a payment for all the times he tried to end her life and then just turned her back as if she was dust.

In six quick hand signs, Sakura turned to him in one swift motion he didn’t notice because he _ never _ notice her and never would think of her as a menace. He dropped at the floor — caught in a genjutsu. If it was the proper time, Kakashi would have smiled.

Tsunade was pale, Kakashi was broken, his father dead.

“_You! _” Naruto pointed again at Obito, hissing like the snake Orochimaru is.

“Enough, Naruto.” Kakashi sensei’s voice dripped all around and truth was that Naruto looked just like in his first day: yellow, orange, loud and dying to prove his worth, wanting nothing more than help, _s__ave_, but he was lost. That Naruto long ago was lost and so was this one.

“No! Not enough. No fucking enough. You were there, Kakashi-sensei. You were there and you did nothing!”

Caught in surprise, this time Obito was the one to take a blow. He flit some meters and came to a halt, sand in his eyes, his knees scraped, the punches Kakashi threw at his stomach still hurt. The punches he threw because he didn’t want to kill him.

That boy with the red eyes and tails trying to find someone to blame sounded too much like himself. He sounded too much like sunken in blood as he was the night he found Rin. When everything went off.

_ (Naruto wasn’t one to lose his nerve. Tobirama wasn’t one to intervene in fights, Hiruzen wasn’t one to shrink, Minato wasn’t to get angry, Kakashi wasn’t to threaten, Sasuke wasn’t to let be put on menace over a kunai, Sakura wasn’t to impose herself – not against Sasuke, Hashirama wasn’t to let Tobirama’s temper win. _ _ The only think in place was Obito now. When Naruto offended him, he defended himself. When he was yelled at, he yelled back. When Naruto hurt him, he _

_ bled. _

_ Naruto was already losing his shit over his responsibility for the dead ones. If he kept like that, he wouldn’t survive. Obito always wondered how Kakashi made it that far. He wondered, more than often than he liked to admit, how he could make survival of a raw, awful thing be so _

_ beautiful.) _

“It wasn’t that simple —” Hopeless swam in Minato’s eyes.

“Fuck it. He was there and he did jack shit —”

That seemed to be the eternal motif: the hangman.

Not one, but all that caused his parents death. Therefore, the ones that, even with his new powers, still stole him the chance to see his mother and his sensei. Thus, the ones that stole him all he always envied. Yet, he did not see what was right in front of his eyes: one of the headsman was one of the hanged and he was poking him with sticks made of flame. (And Kakashi was letting him, as he always does. _ Stop this pity party , _was what she said. Maybe, someday he will be able to.)

The first Hokage cut the air like a blade cutting through crunched leaf: easily but too loud.

“Madara’s still here?”

There was an urge in his words that was lost to only Naruto and his father. The air went full with static and small, teeny rays ran from the ground to the skin (which should be impossible, once the earth doesn’t convey lightening. This was no ordinary shit.) making uncomfortable goosebumps raise.

“Did you, First God of Shinobi?” what the fuck is he even talking about, Hashirama thought.

“Stop talking to people like that, Naruto!” Minato hissed, but that didn’t matter anymore.

“WHY SHOULD I?” As his voice sounded like a thunderstorm it couldn’t be comparable to his brother’s — Naruto’s was made of nature’s energy, like the Earth itself was giving him some piece of its power to roar, to make the ground tremble.

At the same time there was another thunderstorm, just as potent. Only Naruto didn’t notice, but his covered the whole sound outside his bubble. His eyes appeared to never have been blue at all and would never be again. His hair was wild and couldn’t be tamed, like Kakashi’s, but he didn’t cary that safe sensation like that. No. He just looked like the dangerous whisper he was as a kid.

_ (As a second thought, for a fly of second, it occurred to Sakura that Kakashi also was once a dangerous whisper. When she looked at his profile her chest was filled with peace and safety, like a harbor. Being with him was like being in security of home, of a port and yet she knew that ships weren’t made to that. And even with that being recognized she knew very well he could be a powder keg or barrel beer and sail with hair. Just as a dangerous whisper.) _

The air outside, the impending danger went quiet.

That was a mistake.

“This is not you at all…” Sakura was pleading. She hated to plead.

“Shut up, you — you — all. Shut up, shut up!”

“Naruto, stop! You are not this kind of person.”

“Why not?” a twelve year old boy. “Why not, why not, why not?” lost, tied, without lunch, his eternal rival and his crush by his side. “I’ve been Naruto,”the kunai tucked in his hand, a promise made in blood. “the good,” calling Sasuke a scary cat, holding a giant snake at his back, smiling not for revenge but for relief. “smiling boy all the time.” mastering the Rasengan, at the cost of almost killing Sakura. “Why do I have to keep like that when people are dying?” saving Sakura from Sasuke’s hands. “When they are continuing to die?” being saved by Sakura’s hands. 

“Naruto, stop! This isn’t you.”

To Kakashi, every word of Naruto’s was splintered with imagery — pure torture inside his own head.

“This isn’t a fairytale, Sakura, this isn’t like fighting in the Academy to train.”

His mother, a face he didn’t really remembered. But the howls of his father over her bed were as loud as the screams of birth and death.

“This is real life.”

The first time he killed. It was a man. He was three. He didn’t mean to, it was an accident. His father told him they should bury the body, but there was no time. Another enemy appeared and Kakashi gained his first scar. But the true terror was his father’s blood covering his eyes and fogging his sight.

“This is fucking more.”

How cold and stiff his father’s body felt at his feet. He had just come back from Academy, after a short mission. It was supposed to take three days, but with him it only took half. Kakashi made dinner and called for his father. The soup was completely cold when Minato found him.

“People will die.”

He was pretty sure he lost his eyesight, but when he saw Obito’s eyes in a red turmoil he felt no pain and just relief. He finally came in therms with the boy he known for all this years. They didn’t need to speak to know they recognized themselves as what they were denying all along – best friends. They’ve been in so many situations already and camaraderie grows you like it or not. So when the rock remove the light of his body and the eye of his life, he felt like a blade through his torso, cutting him in two.

“They will and will and will continue to die — and, and their — all — theirs — there is their blood in my hands”

Rin. Rin, Rin, Rin. She haunted him for so long. He lost the count of the nightmares. He decided that going into a work that dealt with no feelings at all was the best and only thing left for him. He would not only never forgive himself, but never forget. The feeling, the sickening feeling. He was way too young to know that feeling way too well. Her body, her blood, her bones, her eyes, her last word, his _ name _ never let sleep. The pills and the alcohol helped, but time never heals, it just replaces memories — but some never leave.

“and even worse this is your hands and you’re continue not to talk about this.”

Minato. Kushina. Small Naruto in the middle. He couldn’t see, but he knew Minato summoned the Shinigami. His sensei was sacrificing himself for the better good. For his child, his wife, his village. Kakashi never hated the land he was born so much as that day. He saw the long claw of the fox through the chest of the only family he came to know, to see the life leaving their eyes, see them talking to their son for the first and last time in their lives. He could never talk to the boy. There were days he sat in a tree near to the kid’s apartment and would repeat what they said, as if he could hear it. Everytime that yellow hair walked around the streets his heart clenched and his sensei was all he saw. His death. The splash of yellow, red and orange. For once, the Yellow Flash of the Leaf was not fast enough to save the love of his life and his son. He jumped in front of the claw, but they both died together.

_(Kakashi wished that if he ever come to love anyone that he had to die with them or it would kill him slowly. Be it a fang in his heart, but to find what he love and let it kill him slowly — but never before him.) _

“All of this is bullshit and I am tired to talk and to talk and to talk just to see if I can put some fucking sense in their minds.”

Itachi and the massacre. Itachi and his thirteen years, his ANBU mask over his head and a smile in his face. Itachi and the smile he wished he could touch under the white porcelain that day in the treetops after they tricked Shisui’s crow. Itachi and the hair ruffle he gave the boy to soothe him from the world he so pretended to not be afraid of Itachi.

Looking at Sasuke the only resemblance he could see was the hair and the pointy, elegant, womanly pale face. But not only a cell held any similarity. Itachi was the man Sasuke wouldn’t even be able to dream of reaching.

“I am tired to be the one that has to do everything.” Naruto finished.

As he stopped speaking the whole electricity came back in a jolt, throwing them out of their feet.

“Fuck.” Kakashi inveighed as Tsunade’s unconscious body fly to a open space and was about to hit a massive rock that would finish killing her, if she wasn’t already dead. Tobirama was faster (because he truly was) and caught her midair.

He turned to them smiling. Sakura was on fire, ready to burn him for smiling over her dead shishou but then she smiled on her own and none of them ever saw such a big smile on her face.

“She is alive.” she nothing but whispered, turning her face to look at Naruto and Kakashi, tears in her eyes and that huge smile. They were smiling back, relief washing their faces, their hearts back on their usual rhythm.

And then Madara simply fucking vanished.

(Three seconds later, so did Sasuke.)


End file.
